Redefining Changes
by baby-kitsune9
Summary: When naru left the village to train for three years with her master Jiriaya, she got more then she bargained for. For starters she was captured by the akutsuki. escaped barely alive. and the kyuubi was gone leaving her it's power. Kaka/ Fem Naru M rated
1. Chapter 1

You it's been a while since I had a decent idea that I could actually write. But I finally came up with one and I hope it goes okay since my comp is partially co operating.

This chapter is going to be pretty short since it's the set up. The next one should be longer. So here it is and I hope that you like it.

This story takes place at the beggining of Shippuden when Naru returns from training with Jiriaya...two years later than she was meant too.

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The day that Tsunade, Sakura, Iruka and Kakashi stood at the front gates of the village and waved goodbye to the Uzumaki Naru after being told by the Sage nin Jiriaya that he was going to take her out of the village and train her- Had been a day of pride for them.

Seeing their favorite genin finally being recognized for the greatness she was destined for was something that anyone could be proud of. Especially since everyone who had ever hurt her, looked down on her, and once _hated_ her; knew about her training with the village sage and had all wished her well.

That had been almost five years ago. Two years longer than Jiriaya had told them it would take to train her.

Tsunade had sent messages to the Sage nin. Had sent out teams to look for her former teammate and her ganki, but no one ever found any traces of the two. And the one time that Jiriaya had sent a message it had simply said, _Not yet_.

After that, Jiriaya had gone back to maintaining silence.

If Tsunade had known the reason why it was taking so long for her ganki and friend to come back, she would have either cried or gone looking for them herself.


	2. Chapter 2

Two years and one week after training was supposed to end-

Naru stood before the large wooden gates to the Leaf village, tilting her head one way then another as a soft buzzing sensation filled her mind. Jiriaya walked up and made sure to snap a twig or two to let her know that he was there since she wasn't looking towards him anymore and when she turned her head he gave her an awkward, slightly nervous smile.

"Are you ready to go in?" He asked. Naru shook her head no. She was worried about going into the village as she was now. Jiriaya looked at her, an uncomfortable silence stretching between them.

There had been a lot of shit going down these past two years that had kept them away from the village. None of it was Naru's fault- After all she hadn't been the one totally gung ho about some of the stuff that had led up to-

_No! Stop thinking about, man. Stop thinking about losing the Kyubbi and coming a hairs breath from losing Naru too. She's alive. Sure she's different but after everything that she's been though I couldn't expect that she would totally be the same. To think she would still be totally the same after all the blood shed and changes she went through would be naive. _Jiriaya thought as he took several steps closer to the girl- no wait, that wasn't right.

Naru wasn't a girl anymore. She had been fifteen when they had left the village five years ago. Today Naru was a stunningly beautiful twenty year old woman that held very _few_ traces of the energetic, hyperactive child that he'd taken a liking too and decided to teach.

He stopped just in front of her and looked her over with a critical eye. Noting that she was keeping her head down like she usually did nowadays. He reached out and carefully grasped the hood on her jacket and pulled it up over her head so that she could relax a little bit then stepped back. "Let's go. I bet that there are a few people here who would love to see you again."

Naru was quiet yet he could sense her falling into step behind him as he headed towards the gate. He got about halfway through when he felt Naru just sort of disappear on him and turned his head to find her gone. He blinked and looked around for a second then sighed.

_Dammit_. What did she hope to achieve by vanishing into thin air like that? But more importantly, where had she gone?

He was about to go see if he could find her when he heard Gai, Lee, Genma and a few others calling his name as they ran up to greet him. _Crap_. Jiriaya thought darkly. Now he had to answer a buch of questions about Naru that he wasn't comfortable with answering, he needed _desperately_ to meet with Kakashi and Tsunade, and he needed to warn Sakura and the rest of the rookies that Naru wasn't the person that they remembered from before.

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Naru didn't bother passing through the village gates when she could simply bypass them and slip into the village another way. After slipping into the village unseen by even her master, she made a beeline for the old building that she had once called home. Her mind still felt fuzzy, and she couldn't recall a lot of details about the village from before but _somehow_ she managed to make it all the way to her former home without getting lost.

She stood outside of the run down apartment nervously shifting back and forth for several moments, not really caring if she was seen or if she looked more than a little bit suspicious to the people walking by. After a moment or so of mental debate she slipped inside through the front door after taking a moment to pick the lock because she couldn't remember where the key was.

The power was off, and the window blinds were closed but even so she could see everything perfectly. She could see her chairs, her dining room table, her small kitchen, the book shelf against the far side of the wall, hiding the place where her old self had once lost her temper and put her fist through the plaster. Wrecking it almost beyond repair even after trying to fix it with several tubes of toothpaste.

She walked by a small coffee table with a lamp on it and absently reached out and ran her finger tips along the top of the table, feeling the dust that had collected there, gather on her finger tips as she brushed by.

The fuzzy feeling in her head was getting worse. Her breath was starting to come out in little near pants, as if she had run a long distance or simply couldn't catch her breath. She closed her eyes and felt several painful twinges in the back of her mind as images flashed through her head.

It wasn't the first time that this had happened to her since...well she didn't really speak of it. And Jiriaya didn't speak of it either. All she could really remember of the incident was the time that she'd been laying in a hospital bed crying. Her body felt like it had been boiling from the inside, her organs and blood had felt like they were cooking and her master had reached out to grab her when she tried to get up so that she could crawl away and die without him standing there witnessing everything, and having her skin slide right off in her master's hands.

She vaguely recalled the look of absolute _horror_ and_ grief_ on the old Sage's face before he'd jerked his hands back away from her and started screaming for help.

She didn't remember much after that though Jiriaya had told her that she had been in such a state for close to twenty nine days before finally coming out of it.

It was part of the reason her mind was so fuzzy and why she could only recall some things and not others. It was also why her voice was nothing more than a soft, barely whispered rasp now when she spoke. It was part of why every three months or so she ran a fever of a hundred and six, and why she was able to do things that she wasn't able to do before.

It was why she looked different. Acted different. And was why she had been gone two years longer that Jiriaya had meant for her to be. After those long twenty nine days, Jiriayay had been a mess and had cried like a baby when she had finally managed to wake up and get out of her hospital bed. It was why he had attached himself to her side like a shadow and often times placed himself between her and others- Saying that if there was harm to be done then it would be done to him.

He'd had enough of seeing her in pain.

He'd also had to retrain her a little bit at first. Starting with the basics and going from there. Once he was sure that she'd had everything down again, he'd helped her train herself to get used to her new abilities. He'd even helped her discover the depth of them.

She shook her head as her vision faded a little bit, the ache in her skull magnifying a little more. Becoming a migraine.

Her vision slowly came back and she found herself standing in the door to the bedroom that she used to sleep in as a kid and blinked her eyes for a second just to make sure that her vision wasn't going to go out on her again then looked around. She could smell the old scents of cleaning chemicals, sweat, blood, and the dust that seemed to smother the scents, muting them.

She'd have to do something about the dust and other things if she was going to live here again. If one could call what she did now living.


	3. Chapter 3

"So where have you been Jiriaya-sama?" Lee asked curiously.

Like others in the village, Gai's team had been sent out several times in the past two years to see if they could discover the Sage nin's where abouts and like the others they had come back to the village empty handed. Disapponting Sakura, Kakashi and even their friends and Kage time and time again.

The Sage looked at him, he'd half expected the first question out of the boy's mouth to be 'Where is Naru?' but he supposed that he'd take small favors when they were granted and simply hope that no one asked about her before he could find out where she was. He'd bet that she was at her apartment right now. But then again there was also the slim chance that she'd gone to visit her father's grave.

Maybe even stopped by Iruka's place to let him know that she was back. Truly it was a little hard to say where she might be. She'd changed her habits so much that he often had to use a tracking seal made of his chakra to keep tabs on her movements.

It wasn't that he was worried that she might hurt someone or anything. After all as much as she'd changed in the past five years, there were a few things that were _still_ the same. Still defined her as the person he remembered. She still hated hurting others. Though now she could do so easily if she was of a mind too.

"I've been...here and there." Jiriaya said cryptically. Not wanting to say anything about having had spent about six month after he and Naru had been due back in hiding from the Akutsuki while trying to get Naru back on her feet after he'd fucked up so badly and got her caught by them in the first place.

"Here and there hm." Lee muttered as he looked at Gai who was being strangely silent as they walked with the Sage nin.

It had occurred to Lee to ask where Naru was since she wasn't with the Sage nin, but he figured that she must have run off to find Sakura and Iruka and anyone else she might find along the way to tell them that she was back in the village.

Yet Jiriaya's tense body language suggested otherwise. So maybe he was wrong about Naru being in the village. Maybe she had gotten into trouble and the Sage had come back to seek help. He looked away from his sensei and quickly made an excuse to leave the welcome party and started away when Jiriaya's voice halted him for a second.

"Lee, don't get your hopes up for a warm reception from Naru. It's been a long time and she might not remember you completely. So-" Lee turned around and gave the Toad Sage a peculiar look then nodded his head and ran off. As soon as he was out of earshot Gai stepped up to Jiriaya with his arms crossed over his chest, his dark eyes calculating.

"What happened?"

"I'd rather not say." Jiriaya said as he continued walking. Missing the muscle ticking in Gai's jaw before he reached out and grabbed the older nin and pulled him to a stop and growled.

"My kids have been waiting here for the past five years for you and Naru to come back. They all stood at the gate the day that you were supposed to come back and looked for you both. We all did. Everyone in the whole village. So I'll ask you again nicely, then I'm going to get rude. _What. Happened. To. My. Kids. Friend_?"

Jiriaya looked slightly taken aback by Gai's aggression on the subject. And silently deated with himself on whether or not he should just say something or knock the guy out for his less than nice tone. Instead he decided on the lesser of the two evils. One word that pretty much said it all in a nutshell.

"Akutsuki." Gai's pissed demeanor faltered for a second, changing from angry to worried in 0.2 seconds.

"Is she okay?" Gai asked tentatively. Jiriaya gave him a dark look. Of course Naru wasn't okay. She was barely functioning thanks to the bastards and the shit that had happened after the Kyuubi had been taken.

"She's alive. What else matters?" Jiriaya finally said. Gai thinned his lips but said nothing more. He simply kept his hold on the Toad Sage's arm and started dragging him towards the hospital, explaining that Tsunade was there at the moment taking care of his eternal rival, Kakashi, whom had over done things on another one of his missions and would be in the hospital for the next few weeks.

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Tsunade staggered back away from the Copy nin with a look of stunned disbelief on her face. That son of a bitch- He'd bitten her when she had removed his mask so that she could give him his medicine.

Her finger was actually bleeding!

And the Copy nin himself was sitting up in his bed glaring at her with a beyond _scary_ look on his masculinely beautiful face. His mismatched eyes staring at her unblinkingly. And she wasn't totally sure but a second ago she could have sworn that she saw the damn man's lips twitch in amusement before he blanked his features of anything but the furious glare that he was giving her now.

"I said I wasn't taking those damned pills." Kakashi growled at her inbetween shuttering breaths. He saw Tsunade narrow her eyes at him and knew she was about to do something horrible to him for biting her, but dammit he'd warned her that he didn't want to fucking sleep meds. He was chakra depleted and could sleep on his own without the aid of the medicine.

He just needed to get good and comfortable (an impossibility for him since he was in the hospital) and then he'd doze right off. Well, in theory anyways. But as mentioned before sleep was pretty much an impossibility for him because he was in a place where there was lots of people who liked to come barging into his room. And invade his personal space.

Which was not fun for someone like Kakashi.

He tended to get ill tempered and _mean_ when he was in a high traffic area and couldn't rest or relax. And though he knew that Tsunade was just trying to help, he didn't apprieciate the fact that the woman was trying to knock him out against his will.

"Oh you're taking them Hatake. If I can't get you to swallow them then I'll shove them up your-" Tsunade's angry rant was cut off by a knock on the door. Both the Copy nin and Kage looked towards the door and growled in unison then yelled.

"**_What_**!" As the door creaked open a little bit and Sakura stuck her head inside of the room.

"Am I interuppting anything?" She asked curiously as she looked first from her former sensei to her master. The two exchanged a this-isn't-over-yet look before Tsunade sighed and motioned for the girl to come in.

"What do you need Sakura?" Tsunade asked curiously as the pinkette slipped into the room looking a mite anxious.

"I heard a little rumor a while ago and wanted to see if you had heard it yet-" Sakura said before pausing for a moment before saying, "Now keep in mind that right now it's just a rumor and we have no way to know if it's true or not-"

"Just cut to the chase Sakura." Tsunade snapped impatiently. The pinkette cringed a little bit at her master's tone.

"Alright then. I heard a rumor that Jiriaya-sama was back in the village..." Both Tsunade and Kakashi gave the young woman their undevided attention. "Rumor has it that something happened to keep him and Naru away and he's come back for help."

Tsunade's jaw dropped and she started sputtering before roaring, "That damned fool!" She ran for the door and slipped out of the room screaming for her Anbu and Sakura wasn't sure but she could have sworn she heard her master shout, _"If that dumbass has lost my ganki; I'll kill him!"_


	4. Chapter 4

Once alone Kakashi looked at Sakura and grinned and said. "Nice rescue." As he took a moment to lift his arms and pull his mask back up into place.

Under normal circumstances Sakura might have smiled and replied, _Anything to save your ass sensei. _But obviously something was up. She still had that anxious look to her as she went over to the small locker across from his bed and started pulling out random things before it dawned on Kakashi that maybe Sakura hadn't been pulling Tsunade's leg just now about Jiriaya being back in the village.

She pulled out his pants and mysteriously produced a clean, whole shirt for him to wear and handed them to him. "So they're really back in the village then?" Kakashi asked past the sudden lump in his throat, threatening to choke him.

Sakura looked at him and said in an eeirily calm tone. "I look at this one of two ways sensei. One, they are back and something must have happened to keep them away for so long. And two, They aren't back and you can simply get out of bed and irk Tsunade-sama some more."

Kakashi thought about it for a second and picked up the shirt and muttered. "I like that. It's very logical."

"And you like upsetting Tsunade."

"I _live_ to upset Tsunade." The Copy nin murmured as he pulled the shirt over his head with some difficulty despite the sore and aching muscles in his chest, back, shoulders, and arms. He tugged the hem down almost to his waist then picked up his pants and subtly tried to move his toes and legs under the covers then when they wouldn't move he looked back at Sakura across the room where she was standing with her arms crossed over her chest, a look of supressed amusement on her face.

"Oh this is just cruel Sakura." He said in a peeved tone. Sakura's lips twitched a little bit.

"How so?" She asked in amusement, trying hard not to laugh at her former sensei for his little perdicament.

Kakashi gave her a dark look and did this strange, little hand thing to indicate to his legs as if to say. _I've got the pants, but my legs are refusing to work so what the hell do I do? _Sakura laughed for a second or so longer then walked over and took the pants from him and pulled the covers back away from his legs. Underneath he was wearing a pair of grey sweat pants.

"I guess someone thought that you would feel more comfortable in sweats, eh sensei." Kakashi made a strained sound. _Fucking Gai_- He thought as Sakura took his pants from him and told him to take off the sweats.

Taking them off was the easy part and required little effort from the Copy nin. However it took all he had not to blush about the fact that he was cammando under the sweats and Sakura was sort of gaping at him before he got irritated and snapped his fingers in front of her face to snap her out of it as he growled, "Dammit Sakura help me get the damn things on. Tsaunde's getting away."

"Oh, right. Sorry sensei."

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The Anbu that Tsunade sent out to look for Jiriaya didn't have to go far for once. And neither did she since the man was almost to the front door when the whole group came running out of the building and stopped cold when they saw Gai standing there with the Toad Sage next to him. Tsunade blunk up at Jiriaya, noting the lines of fatigue and stress on his face as he dropped his bag and looked her over before quietly saying. "Hey honey. I'm finally home."

Ignoring the fact that her former teammate had called her 'honey' like he used too when they had been younger, Tsunade pushed a couple of the Anbu out of her way and ran up to him and hugged him. All the fear and anxiety that she had felt for the past five years since he'd last left the village lessened when she felt his arms close around her as he hugged her back.

"You're okay."

"Yeah. More or less."

"Is Naru-"

"She's...alive if that's what your wanting to know."

"What took you so long? I was worried." Tsunade demanded as she pulled back a little bit and glared up at her friend. Jiriaya gave her a sad look.

"I know. I'm sorry. I should have kept contact more but I couldn't because I was hiding Naru." Tsunade smacked him on the arm. Once. Twice, then a third time and growled at him.

"What the hell were you doing to make you go into hiding? What did you do to my ganki?" Jiriaya got a pained look on his face and looked away for a second, unsure of what to say to her right then.

"I'll tell you here in a while, but right now I need a favor from you."

Tsunade's eyes went wide and she started to panic. "Oh my god it's Naru- It's my ganki- You got her killed didn't you?"

Jiriaya gave her a sour look and tapped her on the end of her nose with an index finger to reprimand her for her silly thoughts, especially when he'd just told her that Naru was alive not even two seconds ago. Though he supposed that her fear and worry was a mite more warrented than he was letting on. "We've been over this. Naru is _alive_...she's somewhere in the village hiding out, now stop freaking out. It isn't good for your health." Tsunade got a grip on herself and waited as she rasped.

"Okay, okay, sorry. What do you need me to do?"

"I need you to gather the rookie nine. They're all Chnin and Jounin now right?" Tsunade frowned, not understanding why Jiriaya would ask her to gather the rookies.

"I need you to gather them so that I can fill all of you in on why it took us so long to come back. I also need to tell all of you some things about the Akutsuki." Tsunade's eyes widened again and she put one hand over her heart and got a strained look on her face.

"You mean to tell them about the nine tailed fox." It wasn't a question. She could see his intent when he looked at her. A brief flicker of something she couldn't quite pin down flickered in his eyes. He only got that look when he was talking to her about important matters like this. But she wasn't sure if she wanted the kids to hear about the nine tails and how it was linked to Naru.

God, many of those kids had had family killed by the demon fox. What if they somehow blamed Naru for the death of their kin? What if they tried to hurt her?

"It's time that they knew and are made to understand how important it is to keep Naru _alive_ and _well_." Jiriaya said somberly. The doors to the hospital opened up and both Sanin turned their heads to see Kakashi being wheeled out of the hospital in a wheelchair being pushed by Sakura.

"Do as the man asks Tsunade." Kakashi said as Sakura stopped his chair several feet from the woman. His Kage looked none too pleased to see him up and out of bed, but he really didn't care.

Naru was his former student and he had every damn right to be there when Jiriaya did whatever he was going to do. Besides, he wanted to hear about how much his precious student had grown.

After being taught by a man of Jiriaya's caliber, the copy nin would bet that Naru was an amazing nin now. Perhaps more so than Kakashi himself.

Tsunade looked at the copy nin like she'd like to rip his head off but reluctantly agreed. But only on her terms. Jiriaya agreed to her terms, if only to make her feel better about Naru's safety and well being then politely excused himself to go get Naru.

It had been five long years. Two years longer than he'd intended and the last thing that Naru should be doing right now was hiding herself away. Her friends and family were eager to see her again. And see her they would. Even if he had to drag her through the village, kicking and screaming.

Or in her case, hissing and growling like an rabid animal.


	5. Chapter 5

Naru had left her apartment a while ago when she'd sensed several people heading towards it. It wasn't that she thopught they were enemies or anything. And even if they had been it wouldn't have mattered much. Not anymore.

She was now physically strong enough now to fight off an entire army without help if she wanted too. She'd merely abandoned the apartment because she didn't want to deal with a bunch of people.

The noise. It bugged her sensitive ears.

Made her head hurt and somtimes feel sick to her stomach. And she strongly disliked being sick to her stomach. Especially since it took hours to recover.

She did however have no problem with walking through the village. As long as she kept the hood on her jacket up and her head down, she could do just about anything if it meant getting out and about. It was when people expected her to look at them and speak that she got nervous.

She didn't want them to see her eyes. Or her fangs. As small and fairly insignificate as those features were to most people, they still tended to inspire fear in others. And she didn't like that. She didn't like having people run from her screaming, thinking that she was going to hurt them.

She didn't like the rumors that they inspired or what people thought of her. It made her feel ashamed of the fact that she had survived the transformation that Kyubbi had put her through when it was pulled from her body.

She sat down on the steps leading up to her father's crypt and looked around the graveyard. There was only a small number of people who knew that she would come here to hide away form the world and chances of them finding her right away were-

She heard a few twigs snap behind her and twisted around to look at the source and scowled a little bit when her master stepped out from around a tree and looked at her. "Ah, there you are. I thought that you would be here when I couldn't find you at home. Did you know that there is a whole mob of people looking for you right now?"

Naru blew her bangs out of her face a little bit when she exhaled but other wise said nor did nothing. Honestly what was she supposed to say? _Of course I know there_ _are people looking for me, but I can't really bring myself to care at the moment._ Dammit she was tired! And hungry and her head hurt.

As far as she was concerned everyone should be a little bit more understanding of her need for _quiet_ and _rest _instead of trying to intrude upon her. Her master walked over to where she was and dropped down so that he was sitting on the steps next to her.

"You know when you were younger I used to bring you here. Every week for the first six years or so of your life. And we would sit right here on these steps and play thumb wars and show your dad the finger paintings you made at school. Or we'd come here for picnics and just sit and talk to Minato until you wore yourself out. Then I'd pick you up and say goodbye to him and _swear_ to god that I would never let anyone hurt you before I would carry you home and put you to bed."

"I don't remember those things." Naru said softly. A sad tinge to her tone was the only indication that she wished she could remember. Jiriaya looked down at her and slipped an arm around her slender shoulders and pulled her against his side.

"I know you don't. But I do. And I owe your father an explination on why the Akutsuki managed to get their hands on you in the first place. I also owe him an apology for not being able to keep my word."

"No you don't..."

Jiriaya gave a dry, humorless laugh. "Yes. Yes I do. I almost got you killed."

"But I'm still here."

"Yes. But not because of me."

"Does it really matter?"

"It shouldn't. But with you strangely enough, it does matter. I want to be able to look your mom and dad in the eye when I die and say that I did my best to make you strong, and prepare you for what's to come. To instill all of the morals, and codes of honor that they lived with; in you."

Naru tipped her head back, letting him see her face a little bit and smiled at him for what must have been the first time in months. Or possibly years. It was a little hard to tell when time dragged by so damn slowly that it felt like forever and a day. Still, the slight display warmed him considerably. "You did good Jiriaya. You really did." Naru rasped, her tone firm yet gentle.

He gave her a small smile back and gave her a squeeze. "Thanks. That means a lot coming from you."

"It should-"

"It does..." Jiriaya said as he slowly pulled his arm out from around her and started to drop his arm before saying, "I have to take you to Tsunade. We're planning a meeting with your friends to tell them about some of your...uh, _changes_."

Naru's good mood died right then and there, her faint smile vanishing in an instant as her master stood up and held his hand out to her. She didn't want to go with him but knew that he'd chase her down just like he had several times before if she didn't go. Slowly she got to her feet and slipped her hand in his and tried not to flinch when his fingers closed around her hand, holding it in a grip that she wouldn't be able to shake easily.

There would be no running form this. She knew that instantly. That this was simply something that she couldn't hope to hide forever, yet she had hoped to at least have some more time to adjust before anyone was told about her changes and stuff.

But it was beginning to look as if she wouldn't be catching a break for a while. And though she didn't want too, it was time her friends learned the truth about her. Which meant that she would have to tell them everything about Kyubbi and herself among other things.

And she was not looking forward to this at all.


	6. Chapter 6

Kakashi decided to stand during the meeting once it got under way. Not exactly the smartest move for someone in a weakened condition but he wanted desperately to see Naru. As it was he doubted that he'd recognise her once she walked in.

So when Jiriaya walked in an hour later with a hooded figure that sort of reminded him of Shino, then he was right. He hadn't recognised her. At least not right away. But the second she took the floor next to the old Sage and lowered her hood, well he _sort of_ recognised her.

He saw only the briefest glimpse of soft tan skin, the curve of a jaw through platmium blond/reddish pink hair that hung in the person's face and down the person's back. Stopping just shy of the middle of the person's back.

He could see soft pink lips, a small nose, and could just barely make out the eyes. Wide, exotically shaped- But they weren't blue. Or rather they weren't Naru's. The eyes of the person standing next to Jiriaya in the black pants and hooded jacket had no weapons on them that could be seen. No pouches or holsters. The hands were stuffed in the jacket pockets and the person's head was bowed.

If it hadn't been for Tsunade's reaction to the person Kakashi wouldn't have even known that the person that he was staring at _was_ Naru.

But the person standing just next to Jiriaya, looking down at her feet and appearing anxious and scared, was Naru. His Naru. God she'd gotten so big! He saw Sakura out of the corner of his eye doing this weird thing with her hand as if she were trying to figure out just how much Naru had grown, it was either that or she was mentally calculating her size.

Kakashi figured that Naru had at least six inches over Sakura. Which would put her right about chin height on him. _Amazing-_ He thought as a small smile curved his lips as Jiriaya started talking.

"Thank you everyone for coming here on such short notice. I know that many of you are anxious, and wondering why you're here. Where Naru is and such. But before I let you anywhere near Naru I need to explain why- It took us two years longer to come home..." Jiriaya started fidgeting with one of his sleeves then blurted out suddenly. "The truth of the matter is that we, the adults of the village have been keeping secrets from you. You see twenty years ago our village was almost destroyed by a very ancient, and terrifying force. The Kyubbi. The nine tailed demon fox that was sealed away in one of the villagers-"

He paused and frowned, and seemed to be trying to think of what to say when Tsunade stepped in and helped him out. "The person that the demon was sealed in was Naru. She was the person that the fourth Hokage sacrificed so that all of us could live."

There was a sharp intake of breath from Choji and Shino, Ino gasped and looked horrified. Hinata stared with a slightly shocked look on her face. While others, like Kiba, Neji, Lee, Tenten and Shikamaru didn't react at all.

Kakashi glanced towards Sakura as she walked up to him and leaned in and hissed, "Did you know?" Kakashi weighed his answers carefully, knowing that if he said the wrong thing that the pinkette would put him in traction for the next few months. And that was not what he wanted at all since it meant more time in the hosptial.

"Yeah. I knew." He said in a hushed tone and flinched when Sakura's fingers grasped his upper arm in a steely grip and she gave him a furious look. Kakashi wondered what pissed her off more. The fact that she'd worked with the demon container all these years or the fact that everyone, him included had known and hidden it from her.

"We are going to have a long, long talk later about keeping secrets from your teammates, _Kaka-sensei_." Sakura growled in a scathing tone. Kakashi blinked at her but said nothing more. There was no point in him digging his grave any deeper. Instead he focused on what Jiriaya was saying and tried not to let the feeling of dread churning in his get overwhelm him.

"The reason why Naru was chosen by Lord Jiriaya to train outside of the village is because there is an orginazation called the Akutsuki. And these people are collecting the containers and the demons inside of them and using them to build a weapon that we believe would lead to the mass destruction of the world as we know it-" Tsunade said in a slightly shakey tone before Jiriaya picked up where she left off.

"Two years ago before we were due to come back to the village Naru and I came across an old Akutsuki hideout that I believed to be abandonded-" Tsunade gave the Sage a quick puzzled look. Kakashi found himself straightening his spine and narrowing his eye at the Sage as he listened. "I was wrong. While I was out gathering information I left Naru in the...anyways some of the Akutsuki guys came back and managed to catch her unaware. When I returned I caught them leaving the hideout with Naru. She was unconscious, unresponsive and unaware of anything from that point on-"

"What happened next Jiriaya?" Tsunade demanded in an angry tone. Cutting the Sage off for a moment.

"They took the Kyubbi." Jiriaya said suddenly and just barely had time to push Naru out of the way as Tsunade stomped up to him and slapped him hard across the face and screamed.

"Oh my god! What is wrong with you? How could you let such a thing happen-" Naru moved slightly, catching the Kage's attention as she moved back to the Toad Sage's side and slipped her hand in his and gave it a squeeze. Jiriaya gave the young woman a small pained smile.

"I'm okay Naru..." He muttered before looking back at Tsunade who was looking at Naru through narrowed eyes. Kakashi knew what was coming next and he couldn't blame the woman for her question. After all taking the demon from a container _killed_ the human being used to supress the demon's power. "We needed the information, Tsunade. To know their next move. I never expected them to come back or I would have died to keep them from her."

"How is she alive?"

"Kyubbi was taken-"

"Yes you said that already so how about answering me." Tsunade snapped.

"I'm trying to answer you. Kyubbi was taken before I could get there so I don't know all of the specifics or details but from what I understood of things later on, before Kyubbi was taken; it gave itself flesh and blood form and seperated it's demonic chakra from it's new form. So when it was pulled from her body, it _died_. But it's chakra remained untouched inside of Naru triggering a physical transformation in her-"

Tsunade frowned and reached out and grabbed Naru and pulled her away form Jiriaya's side before he coulds say or do anything, causing the startled young woman to yelp and quickly slip out of her jacket and scurry to the back of the room so quickly that her every movement was a mere blur.

_Holy shit-_ Kakashi thought as he took an unsteady partial step froward as he gaped in disbelief and was tempted to ask someone if they had seen Naru move too. Just to make sure that his eye wasn't playing tricks on him. He looked over at Sakura and found her gaping then looked around the room at everyone else.

Well hell. They were all more or less gaping too.

Jiriaya chuckled and scratched his cheek nervously. "As I said before, Kyubbi's removal from Naru triggered a physical transformation in her. The Akutsuki thought that she was dead when I grabbed her so they didn't bother to come after me when I took her from them to the nearest hospital to see if they could help her. Once there Naru started to go into shock and several attempts to stabilize her condition were made. But after about an hour or so, she seemed to stabilize on her own. Then later that night she started to run a fever of a hundred and ten-"

Tsunade blinked and recoiled a little bit and shouted. "That's impossible! No one could run a fever that high and survive. Most people suffer brain damage once their temp gets as high as a hundred and six!"

"That's right. Most people would. I can't say much about her mind since she can still function pretty well. But she was down with that fever, writhing in agony and screaming for twenty nine days and nights straight before her fever broke and she woke up. And during that time she went through total organ failure and regeneration, she lost copious amounts of blood because she was sweating the stuff, and her skin would slide right off of her body if anyone touched her. There were times when she was lucid enough to _beg_ someone to kill her she was in so much pain..."

Tsunade looked at Jiriaya for a moment as a haunted look crossed his face. "When she woke up she couldn't remember things. Like how to walk, talk or dress or feed herself. I honestly thought that she was ruined for life, she was so defenseless. And I felt like such a failure that I couldn't bear the thought of bringing her back to you like that. So I sat down with her and started to re teach her those things-"

"And when she had them down I re taught her the basics of shinobi training and so on until she had mastered everything all over again. All in all it took about three months for her to re learn everything. Which is just amazing if you really think about it. Once she re learned everything I then tried to help her teach herself to use her new abilities. And that is what took us so long."

"So that...person really is Naru?" Someone, Kiba, asked as he pointed towards the woman peeking out at them from around the late third Hokage's favorite sitting chair.

Jiriaya nodded. "Yeah that's her."

"So is it okay if we finally talk to her?" Shikamaru asked in a bemused manner. Jiriaya indicated that it was fine with him. Naru however remained partially hidden behind the chair for the next twenty minutes or so as everyone walked over and started talking to her all at once.


	7. Chapter 7

"Naru!"

"It's damn good to see you, girl-"

"What's with the too shy act?"

"Aren't you going to say hello?"

"Hey why aren't you looking at us?"

"_Everyone shut up and back up-_" Shikamaru barked at the group of men and women pressing in on Naru who was looking more and more nervous by the second. Everyone looked over their shoulders at Shika, their eyes wide.

"Who died and put you in charge?" Ino growled at him in irritation. Shikamaru gave her an impatient look as Neji reached out and grabbed her by the back of her shirt and pulled her back away from Naru as Shika said.

"I know you guys are happy to see Naru, demon or no, but didn't any of you hear what Jiriaya said a second ago? Naru's memory isn't what it used to be. She may not even remember any of us. So crowding her is a bad idea. Got it?"

Everyone got quiet for a second and looked at Naru who was looking down at her feet, trying hard not to freak out on them as Shikamaru walked up, pushing his way through the others who had finally backed up. And stopped right in front of her and reached out with both hands and framed her face in his hands and forced her to look at him.

He was a bit saddened to see a flicker of panic cross her face an instant before she shut her eyes. "Open your eyes Naru."

"D-Don't wanna." Naru said in a raspy tone. Shika ran his thumbs along her cheeks, noting the fact that she didn't have the whisker marks she used to have anymore. Her skin felt softer, was a touch lighter with a healthy peach color to it. Her hair was longer than he'd ever seen it before, the color no longer an ash blond with golden highlights.

Her features were more delicate. Exotic looking.

Her build, though she was still petite- Wasn't as petite as he had expected. Her breasts had finally grown, taking her from flat to a nice 36-40 B cup. She was big, but not as big as Hinata. Though she definately outranked Ino in the chest area. Her body was still as lean and tones as it used to be though her hips were a mite wider.

All in all she was a very beautiful young woman. And she was still refusing to look at him. How was he supposed to help her if he and the others didn't know just how much she had changed? "Open your eyes Naru. I need to see what I'm working with."

"Don't wanna." Naru said again.

"Then at least talk to me. Tell me that you remember me." Naru cracked her eyes open just a sliver, not enough for him to see them completely but enough for him to see that the color was different. Just like everything else about her.

"Shadow user, Nara clan, Shikamaru-" Shika's lips curved up a little bit. Yeah, she remembered him.

"Good, good. Now can you tell me who of the others behind me you remember?"

"Wolfy-" Naru said suddenly. Shika frowned a little bit wondering if she was asking for Kiba and was about to ask her when she said a little more clearly. "I want wolfy and pink."

"Wolfy and Pink? You mean Kakashi and Sakura don't you?" Naru didn't say anything more and Shika sighed. God this crap was giving him a headache. "Okay. I'll take you to wolfy and pink but before I do, I want you to know that if you need anything now that your back- If you get lost, scared, anything at all; you can come to me or one of the others here and we'll drop everything to help you. Okay."

Naru nodded her head, understanding that he felt he needed to remind her that she could ask them for help. He needn't have bothered. Her memory may be faulty now but she never needed to ask for help because along with it's chakra, Kyubbi had given her it's knowledge as well.

She could more than take care of herself whether she could funtion right or not.

Shika put his hand to his mouth and gave a loud, shrill and annoying whistle then hollered. "Oi, pink and wolfy! Your teammate wants to see you!" Naru cringed at the sounds Shadow made and clapped her hands over her ears in an effort to block them out. But it was no good.

Under the rush of blood in her veins, she could still hear him loud and clear. _Annoying! _Naru thought as she gritted her teeth and waited until some of the ringing in her ears lessened before dropping her hands back to her side and shooting Shadow a mean looking glare.

Across the room Kakashi and Sakura had been in the middle of a heated discussion about Naru and the things that everyone had been keeping secret from Sakura, when they heard Shika whistle and yell at them. Calling them Wolfy and Pink, annoying the two considerably since they didn't find the new names the least bit funny. Yet they made their way over to the kids and were nearly knocked to the ground when Naru launched herself at them and caught them both up in a clingy hug.

_Ah, so this is what we were called for._ Kakashi thought as he and Sakura wrapped their arms around the blond and hugged her back.


	8. Chapter 8

It was so good to finally have Naru back in the village where she belonged and after a warm greeting form the blond, Kakashi and Sakura politely kidnapped her so that they could spend some time with her to make up for the past five years that they had lost, feeling that rebonding with her was as important to them as breathing.

The second missing link in team seven had finally returned home. Lessening their worries and fears considerably.

After leaving the meeting with Naru, Kakashi and Sakura walked with her through the village quietly until they reached training ground seven. "I'm more than a little bit surprised that you remember us after everything that Jiriaya-sama said that you went through-" Sakura said suddenly as Naru did a little walk around the memorial stone as Kakashi gracefully dropped to the ground to sit, trying to conserve his energy.

"I recall your names-" Naru said as she paused beside the large marble stone for a moment. "I recall your names but not your faces. Or was it the other way around?" Naru asked no one in particular, she seemed to be partially talking to them and partially talking to herself. And Sakura and Kakashi resigned themselves to merely listening for the moment.

Simply enjoying the sound of her voice as she partially babbled. "It was one of the two. I can't really recall which-"

"Is that why Shika called us wolfy and pink?" Kakashi asked curiously. Naru's head bobbed a little bit indicating that she had nodded.

"Yeah. I can't always rely on my memory for things so I mostly tell people apart now by _physical_ _appearance_. Pink for your hair-" Naru said as she pointed at Sakura, then turned her hand a little bit and pointed at Kakashi. "And I called you wolfy because of your eyes. They're very sharp, very cunning, and entirely ruthless."

Kakashi sighed and hung his head a little bit as Sakura clapped a hand to her mouth and snickered as she said, "She's got you pegged good sensei."

"Yeah...sounds like." Kakashi muttered in a sulky tone while thinking, _Now why does that hurt my feelings? _He should consider what Naru said to be a bit of a compliment shouldn't he? But more to the point, Kakashi lifted his head to look at Naru as she once again started to walk around the stone and frowned.

He knew from what Jiriaya had said that her memory was messed up, but he didn't know why she was behaving in such a child like manner. Was Naru perhaps brain damaged like Tsunade had asked? Sure Kakashi knew that there was all types and varying degree's of damage that affected people differently, but-

He glanced towards Sakura who had sombered up and was frowning at Naru in the same way he had been, her expression troubled. "Naru, how well do you function?" Sakura asked curiously, the medic in her coming to the surface. Naru looked a little startled at the question and tripped over her own feet and fell to the ground with a soft yelp.

Both Kakashi and Sakura cringed a little bit and sighed.

Geez, no matter how grown up Naru looked some things would never change, would they? Naru lay on the ground for a second before lifting her legs into the air and brought them back down as she arched her back and used the shift in her center of gravity to jump back up.

A faint blush staining her cheeks as she chewed on her bottom lip for a second with small white teeth. "I function well enough." She said after a moment or so. Sakura gave her a calculating look.

"Has anyone ever tested you to make sure that your-" Naru nodded her head and dusted herself off before walking over to Sakura and saying.

"The memory holes, the different speech patters and behavior are all part of the change I went through. Kyubbi couldn't let me keep those thing. Not if I was going to stay sane once the change was over... It's frustrating, but I haven't really adapted yet. It's sort of a long process, ya know."

"So Kyubbi took certain parts of yourself away when it was taken?"

"Yes."

"So this child like-" Naru bristled a little bit and shot Sakura a dark look and said in a peeved tone.

"I'm not a child and thinking that I'm anything like a child could get you hurt. I'm _not_ an invalid. Not a child. Not stupid. Not slow. _Not_ brain damaged. Remember that." Sakura looked a little startled by Naru's tone but didn't seem to take any offence in the blond's warning.

"Okay, okay, I get it. I just wanted to know why you were acting so..._innocently_. Dropping your guard and such. I mean this is a shinobi village after all. And you never know-"

"That's not true." Naru said as she lifted an hand and ran her fingers through her long hair, pushing some of her bangs back from her face a little bit in a subconscious guesture. "I _would_ know. There's very little now that I'm not aware of on some level."

Frowning, both Kakashi and Sakura looked at her strangely. _What the hell did that mean? _

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"Okay so now that I know what happened to keep you and Naru away...Tell me something that I don't know." Tsunade said as she crossed her arms over her breasts and leaned her back against the wall next to the window. Jiriaya turned his head a little bit, the cigarette he'd just lit up hanging on his bottom lip.

"Naru isn't human anymore." Jiriaya said suddenly, his dark eyes never wavering from Tsunade's face as he gauged her reaction. He saw a sudden flicker of sorrow and worry, but she quickly masked them and said in a rough tone.

"I suppose that I should say that I'm not surprised. After all the Kyubbi killed itself to make her something more than human. So that she would live. So if she's not human anymore, what is she?"

"I think you already know." Jiriaya said softly as he turned his head back so that he was staring outside, the smoke off of his cigarette wafting up to be caught by a small gust of wind. Scenting it of red wine.

"I think I do, but I'm scared of examining the answer too closely."

"You have every right to be scared Tsunade. But before you full on freak out on me you should know that Naru doesn't seem aware of what she is now. Or if she knows, she simply doesn't care. To her nothing has changed. People are still precious- Worth fighting for. Freedom is still something worth dying for. And the village and it's people are still _all_ she has. All that she lives for."

"You say it like I shouldn't be worried."

Jiriaya made a humming sound as he took a drag of his cigarette and held it. "I don't think you have any reason to worry at all. Kyubbi saw too it that Naru would never use her new abilities against us to do harm in any shape or fashion. It took away every part of her heart and mind that could be _currupted_ by her new power. She has no drive or ambition...anymore."

"What about her hopes? Her dreams?"

"Those are still there. I'm merely saying that Kyubbi saw to it that no matter what may happen next, she would always be content with what she's got." Tsunade stayed quiet for a long time, unsure of what to say to Jiriaya's assessment of Naru's new situation. And after a while decided to change the subject to Kakashi's upcoming retirement.


	9. Chapter 9

About an hour into their visit with Naru, Sakura had to leave to go to work. Leaving Kakashi and Naru alone together to continue their bonding for just a little bit longer despite the fact that the hour was growing late.

The two talked about everything, well okay, Kakashi talked about everything ranging from missions to the forming new relationships between some of Naru's friends. He told her about how Temari had proposed to Shikamaru, been turned down which led to his kidnapping and return about a month later. After which Temari had found out that she was expecting and was currently getting her things together in the sand village so that she could move to Konoha and live with Shikamaru since he was the father of her baby.

Shika still denied anything happened between them, but the Copy nin knew better. And after a subtle threat from both of Temari's brothers, Shika figured it would be in his best interest to just give in. So he was more or less doomed to domestic bliss whether he wanted to be or not.

Which had been stupid of him since it brought up uncomfortable questions from Naru. Questions like, "Are you married? Kids?" He'd answered no on both counts while silently cursing himself for mentioning relationships at all. Naru had looked at him then, her vermilion red eyes peeking out from under her bangs and he could have sworn that he caught something in her expression.

Something that he couldn't quiet place right then. But he knew what she must be thinking.

He was thirty, nearly twenty years older than he had originally thought he would live to be. He was still single. No girlfriend. No bastard kids. _Nothing_. He didn't even have a house plant to call his very own.

She was probably wondering what was wrong with him to make him avoid such attachments. Well, his answer was simply. To date there had never been anyone _good_ _enough_ to form those bonds with. Because when he decided that he liked someone enough to even bother to put down roots, he wanted to make damn sure that the woman was worth it.

He'd met too many women with ambitions of becoming a Hatake for the wealth, title and such; _not_ to be overly cautiousabout who he involved himself with. He'd had a few women on his list of possible mates but a majority of those women had been either dating someone seriously or gotten married.

Leaving him back at square one until about three weeks ago when he'd been called to the Tower to take part in a meeting with Tsunade and the council whom were all concerned about his lack of an heir. Their decision was to force him to retirement with in the next month so that he can find himself a woman to bear his offspring.

Frankly Kakashi thought it was rather unromantic of them, but there wasn't a lot that he could do about it.

Orders were orders and the council and Tsunade all had very valid points for _why_ they wanted him to settle down. Which meant that if he was going to find someone to settle down with, he would have to look to someone that was younger than him by several years or he'd never find anyone.

"So what else is new?" Naru asked all of a sudden. Kakashi shrugged his shoulders and tipped his head back to look up at the sky. Evening had come and the sky was slowly starting to darken. He supposed that he should be shocked by how long he and Naru had been sitting there talking since it had only been three thirty in the afternoon a few hours ago. But to be honest he wasn't surprised.

He'd enjoyed his lengthy near five hour talk with his former student. Even if she didn't say much, he'd still enjoyed the visit. He'd been feeling lonely for the past five years while waiting for her to come back from training. And while he spent as much of his spare time as he could with Sakura, it hadn't changed the fact that he had always been waiting for Naru.

He simply hadn't felt whole without her running around the village, getting into trouble...needing him to bail her out of _odd_ and comical situations that always left him gnashing his teeth and growling at someone in a furious manner while trying to hold onto her.

"I can't really think of anything else to talk about." Kakashi said softly, deciding to wait until Naru had re adjusted to life in the village before he mentioned his retirement.

"Then I guess it's time to call it a day." Naru said as she slowly got to her feet then looked at him expectantly. He sighed and slowly got to his feet, staggering a little bit as a new wave of exhaustion hit him.

He might have fallen, might have hurt himself on the marble stone or something if he hadn't staggered hiself right into Naru, who wrapped her arms around him automatically and held him there against her until his legs decided that they would cooperate with him just a little bit longer.

Hopefully long enough to get him home since there was no damn way in hell he was going back to the fucking hospital.

He put his hands on her shoulders and gently moved her away from him and gave her an apologetic look, "Sorry. I guess I'm still a mite tired from before."

Naru looked at him for a second then poked him in the chest, dead center over his heart with her index finger and said in a chidding tone. "You should take better care of yourself, wolfy. You're far too young to spread yourself so thin."

Kakashi laughed at her somber words. Oh god she was just precious! His laughter died down to a soft rumbling amused chuckle as Naru gave him a serious look. "Your right. Your right-" He said as he patted her softly on the right cheek with one hand before saying. "Come on. I'll walk you home."

Naru grasped his wrist in her hand and slowly shook her head no, then countered. "Nu-uh. I'll walk _you_ home." Unsure of how to repond to his former student's words, he lapsed into total silence as Naru started walking while still holding onto his wrist and sort of forced him to walk along behind her while wondering if she even knew where he lived.


	10. Chapter 10

Okay kittens.

Tomorrow is my anniversary so I won't be on the computer all day. And the day after I"m taking my computer to be fixed if I can afford it. So I may not be on for a few days after Tuesday either.

So this may be the last update you get for a little while.

This may not be the last chapter that I post tonight though- So I thought I'd go ahead and give you a heads up. Now I'm off to take a shower so that I can think of what to put in the next chapter.

See you soon.

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About twenty minutes later Kakashi had to pull Naru to a stop, he was sure that the silly girl was hopelessly lost. But that wasn't what made this situation funny to him. No, what made the fact that Naru was lost, funny to him was the fact that they were standing right _outside_ his apartment building.

Naru stood there for a second or so in the middle of the street, looking around before turning to look at him while blushing and said, "Well, this _is_ embarrassing."

"Are you a little bit lost?" Kakashi asked, assumming the reason behind why she looked so embarrassed at the moment. Naru gave him a dark look and muttered something under her breath and he chuckled and pointed to his building and suggested. "You could always get directions from the guy in 335. He knows all the in's and outs of the village and can point you in the right direction."

Naru frowned and looked towards the building on her left where he was pointing and gave him a peculiar look before reluctantly agreeing. He walked up to the stair way leading up to the third floor where his apartment was silently snickering to himself about the prank he was pulling and not even a moment or so later Naru was knocking on his apartment door, and one of his shadow clones was answering it.

She looked first at him then at his clone then growled at him as he busted out laughing hysterically, unable to resist doing so any longer. "You're a punk Wolfy." Naru muttered despite the fact that she wasn't upset with him for deciding to mess with her.

He must have felt that messing with her now was simply too entertaining to resist. Not that she could blame him any.

Jiriaya had done the same thing once she had re learned everything to help her get used to being picked on a little bit. In an effort to keep her from becoming upset and better understanding some people's sense of humor.

So it wasn't like she could be upset with him for his joke. Especially when she really thought about it. It _was_ kind of funny. Though not hysterically so.

Kakashi sombered up and dispelled the clone and slipped inside of his apartment for a second then came back to the door minus his shoes and his mask and headband and asked her if she wanted to stay with him for the night since she got lost so easily and he didn't have the energy left to make sure that she got home.

He told her that if she wanted, she could take his bed for the night. Naru gave him a measuring look then politely declined his offer feeling that despite his kind offer, if she said yes to him; he'd be uncomfortable with her in his home. So instead she turned him down flat then turned and waved and started off for home when he called out, "Naru if you get lost, just come back here and you can stay with me for the night!"

She waved again once she got to the street to indicate that she had heard him then pulled her hood up and started walking again. She doubted that she would be back tonight.

But because she couldn't always help herself about getting lost, she made sure to attach a small spider silk thin wire to the railing just outside of Kakashi's door to help her find her way back and walked around until she realized that it had been two hours since she had left Kakashi's building and she was hoplessly and irrevocally lost.

"Well hell." She muttered as she looked around for anything familiar. And found very few things that could help her get her bearings. So after twnty minutes or so of silently debating with herself she sighed and turned around and started to make her way back to Kakashi's, following the small trail that her wire had left behind her.

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Kakashi had been sitting up in his living room, waiting to make sure that Naru didn't wind up coming back to crash at his place. He'd already picked up around the apartment a little bit in his parinoia.

And had also bathed and dressed himself in a sleeveless wifebeater and a pair of cotton draw string sweats and was starting to doze off when he heard the faint but distinct sound of small feet touching down lightly outside of his apartment door and sat up a little straighter, his eyes wide open as he held his breath and waited.

A second later there was a small tap at his door. Not a knock. A tap. Like Naru had simply drummed one finger on the door, yet the sound was loud enough to let him know that she was there.

Kakashi got up slowly and made his way over to the door and cracked it open to make sure that it was her, and had to bite back a grin when he saw the hooded figure standing there. He opened the door a little bit more and leaned his shoulder against the door frame and stared down at her. "You got lost again, huh."

It wasn't really a question, merely an voiced observation about why she was back there. Naru's head bobbed a little bit as he frowned then asked. "If you got lost so easily then how did you find your way back here?"

Naru opened her mouth to answer when suddenly from somewhere in the streets below someone let out a hysterical scream and hit the ground shouting. "Oh my god! I've been caught! Help! Help!" Followed by several shinobi coming to the person's rescue also shouting.

"What the hell is a wire doing here!"

"Quick, untangle him!"

Kakashi gave her a strange look through narrowed eyes and stepped out of his apartment just long enough to loscate the wire that she had used to find her way back and cut it away from the railing outside of his apartment and stood there watching for a second as the nins trying to help the hysterical person all got tied up in her wire too.

Before reaching out and hooking an hand around her nape and pulling her flush against his side and dragged her, flailing her arms into his apartment while muttering that he was _not_ going to be blamed for the mess below and quickly slammed his door shut and locked it before letting her go and saying, "A wire. Really?"

She pushed her hood back away from her face and shot him a disgruntled look before shrugging and saying defensively. "I didn't have anything else."

"Yeah, I figured. But still you shouldn't have used a wire." Kakashi said a little more sharply than he meant too. Naru flinched a little bit at his tone and dropped her eyes to the floor and muttered.

"Sorry."

Kakashi sighed and reached out and grasped the zipper of her jacket and pulled it down about half way before she grabbed his wrist and looked at him again. "Tomorrow after we've both rested up, I'm taking you around the village to help you re familiarize yourself so that you don't ever have to use a wire again. Okay?"

Naru nodded her head then dropped her gaze again as Kakashi sighed again and pushed away from his door and walked out of the room for a second and came back a moment or so later with a towel and a large long sleeved shirt and pressed them into her arms and explained. "Go take a shower and try to relax. You can wear my shirt for tonight." While he waited for her to take the stuff from him.

She nodded again and lifted her arms to take the towel and shirt then left the room as he pointed her down the hall.


	11. Chapter 11

Naru slipped into Kakashi's bathroom cautiously, as if expecting the room to somehow come alive and eat her or something. But surprisingly it was nothing like she had expected it to be for a confirmed bachelor. For one thing it was clean. There was no hair in the drains, no mold growing on the walls, no clothes lying strewn about the room.

She flicked on the lights and blinked several times when the light reflected off of the blue tiles running along the wall around the room, temporarily blinding her. She flicked off the lights and looked around again, allowing her eyes to adjust to the darkness as she set her borrowed shirt and towle on the sink counter and started stripping.

She hung her hoody on the door knob then pulled off her shirt and slipped off her bra and set it on the counter next to Kakashi's shirt then ditched her shoes and pants and debated for a moment or so on what to do with her panties. She wasn't so sure she'd feel comfortable running about without them on, even if her butt would be covered by Kakashi's shirt.

It still felt a mite wrong to her.

So after several minutes of silent debate with herself she slipped her panties off and was about to put them next to her bra when she heard a knock at the door and jumped at the sudden noise as Kakashi said from outside of the bathroom. "Sorry for starttling you but I managed to borrow a pair of...uh..._unmentionables_ from one of my female neighbors. She said that you could use them if you wanted, but you didn't have too if you felt weird about it. I'll leave them hanging on the door knob out here and let you get back to whatever your doing."

He fell silent. And Naru wasn't sure but she could almost swear that she could sense him blushing as he walked away from the room, leaving her alone again. She showered quickly, taking just enough time to wash her hair while feeling just a little bit paranoid about Kakashi's presence skulking about the apartment and dried herself and dressed just as quickly.

Before cleaning up the little mess that she had made when she had dripped on his floor and grabbed her dirty clothes and tied themstogether so that she wouldn't lose them and carried them out of the room with her, tucked under her arm like a ball and set them in the little corner next to Kakashi's dresser where they would be less likely to be seen or tripped over and then made her way over to his bed and sat down and tried to think of what to do now.

She was clean and dressed, but she wasn't the least bit tired yet since one of the things that she had changed up after her transformation was her sleeping habits. She often times went without sleep for ten days and nights at a time before she crashed. And even when she finally wound down enough to sleep again, she only slept for two or three hours.

She sat there for another ten minutes or so as she calculated how many days it had been since she'd slept. Counting to eight she figured that if nothing else she might be able to give off the illusion of sleep so that Kakashi wouldn't worry about her.

She was lost in her thoughts when Kakashi peeked into the room and saw her sitting on his bed with her long damp hair sticking up in all directions around her face and shoulders, her head bowed, her hands folded neatly in her lap. _Good grief._ The girl was a mess and she didn't seem the least bit bothered by that fact.

"Naru?" Kakashi said her name softly. Almost too softly to be heard yet he noticed that her head snapped up and turned in his direction. Her vermilion red eyes staring at him curiously.

"Is something wrong wolfy?"

"Aside from the fact that your still calling me wolfy...no nothing. I was just coming to check on you. Do you need anything before I call it a night? Food? Something to drink? A brush maybe?"

"No thanks. I'm fine." Naru said politely as she turned her head back to the front again and lowered her eyes to the floor in that peculiar new habit of hers that Kakashi was beginning to suspect was going to drive him mad as he nodded his head.

"Okay then. Night Naru." Kakashi said as he backed out of the room and started to close the door when he heard her say very softly, her tone laced with affection.

"Night wolfy."

(*****************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************)

Kakashi woke up the next morning to find himself in the apartment alone after finding his shirt neatly folded and laid on his bed that looked like it was never even slept in. With a note from Naru that was un readable because her handwriting was just..._horrible_. Honestly how was he supposed to read this? At most all he could do was _imagine_ what the blasted note said.

And the first thing that crossed his semi awake mind was; _Hn, Naru's probably good and lost by now. _Before heading off to the bathroom to shave while he could before he got dressed and headed out to find Naru.

(*******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************)

Naru sat on the roof of a building three blocks from Kakashi's place watching the streets below when she spotted someone vaguely familiar to her and slipped off fo the edge of the roof and let herself fall. She landed on the ground lightly on the balls of her feet just a few steps from the person that she had recognised and got a startled look from the person a second before the man turned himself completely around to look at her.

Naru looked him over under her hood, noting that he still looked as young and worried as he always did. His hair was still the same. His dak skin was still the same. Even the scar across the bridge of his nose was the same. "Can I help you with something?" He asked as he looked her over.

He didn't recognise her. She could see it in his eyes. And though that fact hurt her a little bit, she supposed that it was understandable. She lifted an arm and pointed further down the street and quickly said, "The person that your looking for is down there, wedged into a small place between two buildings, hoping that you won't find him."

The man blinked and gave her a sadistic smile. "Thanks for the clue miss. I'm off to catch me a leafling."

Naru gave him a happy smile and waved. "Have fun!" She chirped as Dolphin walked away.


	12. Chapter 12

Kakashi spent the better part of the morning looking for Naru and by the time he realised that he'd walked by her like...uh, six or seven times. Well he was pretty good and frazzled by then.

But he finally managed to find her and made a comment about how he was going to have to put a damned bell around her neck just to be able to keep track of her before grasping her wrist in his hand and dragging her off of the crowded streets while trying to ignore the weird looks he was getting from everyone watching.

He couldn't believe how hard it was for him to keep track of someone that stood out as much as Naru did.

And she did stand out. With that damned black hoody and her size and the peculiar way she carried herself. Even Kakashi had noticed before walking up, that there were a number of people on the street that had been watching Naru like hawks. A combination of curiosity and puzzlement in their expressions.

They hadn't been able to place her as a nin or some random crazy person out for a stroll. Frankly Kakashi was beginning to think that Naru now fit in the catagory of a random crazy person, but in a good albit slightly frustrating way. One thing was for sure though, the next time he wanted to really work up a sweat he'd play a game of _hide and seek_ with her.

She'd probably run him into the ground. But what the hell. You only live once. "Okay, oh lost one. I'm going to re teach you directions so that you can get from point A to point B without problems from now on. First we have-" Kakashi tipped his head back to look up at the sky so that he could use the sun's placement in the sky to point out a direction when he noticed for the first time in an hour that it was cloudy.

_Uh-huh..._ Kakashi thought in bemusment. It was looking more and more like the gods were conspiring to drive him crazy again. _What the hell did I do to deserve this, this time? _He wondered as he looked back at Naru who was just standing there with an amused look on her pretty face, her soft pink lips were thinned and she was shifting from foot to foot restlessly.

A sure sign of her humor at the situation. He gave her a mock angry glare. "You noticed the sun disappearing."

Naru nodded and giggled as she said. "An hour ago."

He sighed and let go of her wrist so that he could pinch the bridge of his nose in an effort to keep the headache he could feel coming on, away. Well hell. Now what was he supposed to do? Sure it wasn't like he needed the sun to actually teach her anything, but he sort of needed it as a prop to help her learn. Without it she'd just get even more lost than she already did.

"Okay, here is what we're going to do. I'll teach you directions when the sun comes back out..." Naru reached out and tugged on his shirt sleeve to gain his attention. He dropped his hand a little bit and looked at her. "Yes Naru. What is it?"

"I already know the directions. North-" She pointed north. "South-" She pointed south. "East-" She pointed east. "And west." She pointed to the west of their current location and Kakashi gave her a funny look before saying.

"You know the directions and yet you _still_ _get_ _lost_."

Naru shrugged. "Basically."

"How do you- What the- _Huh_?" He asked with a flabbergasted look on his masked face. Naru flushed a little bit and fidgeted with her jacket sleeve nervously as Kakashi pulled himself together and muttered. "Well...thats just a little bit pitiful Naru." Kakashi finally said before chuckling.

Naru cocked her head and stared at him curiously, not knowing what to make of his sudden drastic change in behavior when he reached out and slipped one of his hands under her hood and pushed it back then bent down a little bit and touched his forehead to hers and said in an amused tone. "I guess some things never change- Hey! How about I just take you around the village the old fashioned way? I've got nothing better to do today and it's really boring just sitting around doing nothing all day. So how about it?"

Naru started to open her mouth to answer him when he grasped her wrist again and said cheerfully. "Okay let's go!"


	13. Chapter 13

Kakashi led Naru around by the wrist for the better part of the morning to make sure that she stayed with him. Stopping only to buy a bell to put around her neck, which strangely enough she didn't seem to take offense in and again to get something to eat for lunch. From time to time someone would walk up to them and ask Kakashi if he'd seen Naru since she was supposed to be back in the village.

He would grin and tug Naru up to his side and _hold_ her in place there, since she would get this freaked out look. And he would simply stand there with one arm draped around Naru while they were partially mobbed by people who were eager to welcome her back to the village.

He made sure that she talked to at least everyone who walked up before letting her go and watching her vanish like a bloody ghost right before his eyes. After that he had to go find her again. He was just lucky that he'd put that bell around her neck ealier or he never would have found her.

As the day wore on Kakashi figured that he had shown her enough of the village to help her get around a little better which left him with time to spare since he wasn't on duty and wouldn't be going on any missions again before his retirement, and the two decided to head somewhere more quiet after picking up something to snack on before heading to training ground zero.

Naru was doing that odd walk around thing that she had done the yesterday night around the memorial stone while he and Sakura had visited with her. The two sat on the ground ten or so feet from a pond. They'd been talking for the past hour about the wheather, some of Naru's adventures while she had been training and other things when Naru finally said. "You have something on your mind."

Kakashi looked a little bit startled. Not exactly sure what to say about her observation. Or her blunt comment. But then the girl had never really had any tact. He thought for a moment, feeling a little bit leery about telling her what had been weighing heavily on his mind lately. But in the end decided that maybe he should talk to at least one of his former students about his up coming forced retirement.

And of the two former students in the village, Naru seemed like she'd be able to handle the news better than Sakura. Though he had hoped to give her more time to settle in. Still she seemed curious to know, so maybe it was okay to tell her first.

"I've been told by Tsunade and the council that it's time to retire from being a nin." He said in a tentative tone as he studied her expression to gauge her reaction. Naru lifted her hands and pushed her hood back off of her head so that he could see her face better.

"That sounds about right-" Naru said after a moment or so of silence. Again surprising him. "Wolf is of that age where settling down would be in his best interest. They want you to continue your blood line no doubt. But that will be a difficult task when no woman has yet to catch your fancy."

Kakashi gaped at her. Stunned that she had figured out the reason for his retirement as well as his current problem of finding a woman suitable for bearing his children.

She made a humming sound and he wondered what was going through her mind when she suddenly said, "Pink is a good woman. The two of you have known each other a long time. Your children would have both your cunning and strength and her chakara control. She would be a good match for you."

Kakashi made a choking sound and shook his head no as images of him siring pink haired children on his other former student filled his head. There was no way that he was having kids with Sakura. _No, no, no, no, no, no! _

"Ayame-san is a nice girl. Easy on the eyes with a nice figure. She has wide hips ideal for bearing sons. She has a nice personality too. She'd be another good match. So would Quicksilver. She has not only the figure ideal for child bearing but has very good instincts and likes children. You could have babies with her-" Kakashi sputtered and flushed furiously under his mask.

Who the hell was Quicksilver and why was Naru telling him that she'd be a good mother? It was like she didn't seem to care one way or another if he married someone else- _Whoa! Whoa... Where had that thought come from._ He was in no way interested in Naru.

She was off limits to _him_ and _others_.

One of which was that she was formerly a demon container, though no one else but a few of Naru's friends and some shinobi were privy to that information. Another reason that she was off limits was because she was Minato's precious child. His _only_ child.

And any dumbass guy that was caught sniffing around Naru would have to make peace with the fact that not only would he have the two Sanin after him, but he'd also have the entire rookie nine and one hugely pissed off Copy nin out for his blood.

But the main reason that Naru was off limits was because when she decided to settle down, she would be given a certain noble ranking that would make her the equivalant of a princess to the people of the village. And she would have to marry someone with an equal ranking to pass down that title to her children.

Which was basically the same boat that he was in. Kakashi himself, after the death of his father had become an acknowledged noble among his peers. And as such he was meant to pick a woman with equal standing among the clans of the village other wise his children would be considered the same as bastards.

Their rights to his title, his lands, his wealth- All of it would be denied. Which is why he was having so much more trouble thinking of a suitable woman. There was only a handful of women in the village that would fit his needs.

And while Naru as she was now could easily fit with his needs, she wasn't on his list...

Was she?


	14. Chapter 14

Over the course of the next few weeks Kakashi spent more and more time with Naru. It wasn't that he had nothing better to do. The latest Itcha-Itcha book had come out a week ago and though Kakashi wanted to get it, he kept putting it off so that he could spend more time with Naru. The woman didn't seem to mind. So maybe it didn't puzzle her as much as it puzzled Kakashi.

What _did_ puzzle him however was the fact that Naru kept coming up with these ridiculous lists of potential mates for him- well okay that didn't so much as puzzle him as it pissed him off. He couldn't understand why Naru seemed so damn _eager_ to help the council and Tsunade marry him off.

Since it was his life he should have a say about who he ended up with, right? Well he'd thought things out and thought things out and kept coming back to Naru.

To him she was the _only_ person in the village that was young enough to have children, she was single (or at least she better be since he didn't want to become a convicted murderer anytime soon) she had a wonderful personality and he'd already caught himself several times, about to try stealing a kiss from her.

Just as an experiment, mind you. To see how she would react to her pervy old former sensei swamping spit with her.

But he always caught himself before his lips could get close enough to touch hers. And Naru in her innocence didn't seem to know what he was doing. Though she did give him some peculiar looks from time to time while he was beating his head on something.

All she really knew was that he was agonizing over something that he refused to speak about.

Which made the situation just a mite more comical to her since she was always jokingly telling him while patting him on the back. "It's okay Wolfy. Don't hurt yourself. You should never forget that life is worth living."

To which Kakashi would always respond with a growl of annoyance that would cause Naru to giggle in amusement.

This went on for a while, sort of like some other things. Like Naru showing up on his door step every night or so to crash in his home rather than staying in her own. When he finally broke down and asked her why she didn't seem to want to stay at her apartment Naru got a strange look on her pretty face and thinned her lips and refused to speak.

To say that this was a mite alarming to him would be an understatement. He began to worry that maybe Naru was still being attacked by the villagers. It wasn't until one night almost three weeks after her return. At about three seventeen in the morning when he was woken up by someone or something scratching at his bedroom window, did he really seem to understand Naru's reluctance to go home.

He found her standing just outside of his bedroom, her hood pulled up in place and the jacket itself was smoldering and damaged from where it had been on fire at one point or another and what he could see of her face was smudged black with ashes while some of the skin on her delicate little hands was a horrific blistered red that was oozing blood.

He woke up pretty fast as soon as he realized that she was hurt and quickly grabbed her by the front of her jacket and pulled her into his apartment before peeking out the door to see an orange, red blaze in the direction of where Naru's home was.

"Please tell me that you didn't try cooking." Kakashi said in a slightly worried tone as he hurriedly stripped her of her jacket, trying hard not to hurt her further but couldn't avoid it when he peeled the sleeves off fo her arms, ripping some of her burned skin away.

Naru didn't even react to the pain, worrying him more since most people would be in tears by this point. He finished stripping her of her jacket and looked at her face and breathed a small sigh of relief when he saw that she was more or less intact. Her hair was sticking up in all directions like it would if she had been shocked by an electric current or something.

Her face was a little paler than he'd seen it in a while and she seemed to be in shock. He snapped his fingers in front of her face a few times after making sure that her wounds were nothing life threatening, she blinked and looked at him and opened her mouth as if to speak and nothing but thick black smoke wafted out before she rasped.

"Damn lightning." Kakashi blinked and started to ask her what she meant when outside the distinct crack of lightning sounded over head. _What the- When did it start lightning? Wait, does this mean that Naru's apartment was hit by lightning? _Kakashi wondered as he ran down the hall and grabbed a few things from his medicine cabinet to take care of Naru's wounds.

He grabbed some gauze, some aloe, some rubbing alcohol to disinfect the wounds on her hands and arms and also grabbed some pain medicine just in case she started feeling discomfort and then ran back to the living room and dropped everything on his coffee table then grabbed the corner and scooted it around to where he could grab things easier. As Naru sighed and quietly sank down to sit on his couch, looking tired.

He took his time to carefully clean her wounds, smeared enough Aloe on them to keep them nice and moisturized for a while and bandaged her hands and arms where ever he saw them burned then started to hand her the pain meds when she shook her head and said. "No good. Stuff doesn't work."

Understanding her meaning he set the medicine aside and stood up. Shoved the coffee table out of his way and sat down next to her and pulled her into his lap and just held her. He felt that she needed the contact as much as he did in that moment and didn't think or dwell on it any further.

He just held her and fell into his old pattern from when she was his student, the same pattern that he'd used to comfort himself late at night after he used to wake up form night terrors about the war or the Kyubbi.

He counted her heartbeats. Each breath she took.

He felt the warmth of her body curled up against his own and let himself feel relieved that she hadn't been taken from him by yet another close call.


	15. Chapter 15

Naru fell asleep in his lap just barely an hour after he'd pulled her into his apartment and treated her wounds, and the only words he'd heard from her lips on the matter of her home being destroyed was, "My house is gone. I guess I'll be sleeping outside for a while, huh."

To which Kakashi had merely hummed and ran his fingers through her silken hair and said. "Not outside. Not now that you have a record of being struck by lightning. Too dangerous."

"But I don't want to be a burden-"

Kakashi had sighed and shifted his hold on her a little bit, pulling her as close to his body as their clothes and positions would allow him too, and rested his chin on the top of her head for a moment. He thought it was ludicrous that the chit would think that she would be a burden on someone just because her house was struck by lightning and burned down.

Acts of god didn't make people burdens. Doing nothing at all when you were supposed to be pulling your weight made you a burden. "Don't think anymore about it tonight Naru. Just close your eyes and get some sleep." Kakashi said gently. He felt Naru nod her head once then fifteen minutes later she was out cold.

Kakashi waited until he was absolutely sure that Naru was asleep before he stood up and carried her back to his room and put her to bed, not the least bit bothered by the fact that his bedsheets would smell strongly of smoke come morning, then got dressed and slipped out of the apartment to go see if he could help salvage anything from Naru's apartment.

Naru's apartment burned far faster than anyone anticipated it would and by the time five a.m. rolled around the whole building she had once lived in was nothing more than smoldering ruins. Which meant that Kakashi's apartment would be an epicenter of activity once everyone found out that Naru was safe at his place, sleeping off the stress.

(*******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************)

Naru's eyes snapped open as soon as Kakashi slipped out the front door to go try to help save her apartment. Not that it mattered to her any since she hadn't been staying there anyways. On the nights that she didn't find herself in wolfy's home, she found herself in the graveyard, or curled up on a rooftop somewhere- Anything that she could do to avoid going back to the apartment to sleep.

Tonights incident had been a good example to her of why she had been avoiding her former home.

Due to the knowledge that Kyubbi had given her it had also given her something akin to 'enlightenment'. Or perhaps it was a sixth sense about things.

She'd known from the moment that she stepped foot in the village that her home would be destroyed. That it would be a disaster that could possibly hurt her or others and she had been doing her best to avoid it and had come to the safest place she could think of out of blind instinct. She simply hadn't known _when_ it would happen. Which was why she had gotten burned when it had finally happened.

She'd just been so shocked by how it had happened that she had stood in the middle of her burning living room just long enough to lift her arms and look up at her ceiling and growl, _"Really?" _In a dismayed tone before throwing herself out the nearest window.

Not realizing that some of the burning slivers of wood had floated down and caught her jacket on fire around her hood (she'd put that out as soon as she had touched down outside of Kakashi's apartment) then had patted out her sleeves with her bare hands. It wasn't like the flames really bothered her. Hell the damn things didn't even hurt her.

But she'd been pretty sure that Kakashi would freak out if he opened his door and found her standing there in _flames_. After all that just wasn't normal. And a sense of normalcy was what she had been missing since her transformation had happened.

Jiriaya had treated her like spun glass for a while after she had woken up. In some senses, he still did. When he wasn't looking at her like she was something odd stuck to the bottom of his shoe that is.

That was part of the reason she liked Kakashi, it was because she knew that no matter whether she was human or not, he still looked at her like she was the same girl she used to be. There was no disgust, no worry, not even fear in him.

He never looked at her like he was worried she was going to jump him and eat him alive. He never really treated her like she was fragile. He treated her like a friend. Or a companion.

She got up and looked around his room a wry smile curving her lips she she looked down at the mattress under her and thought, _It seems like I'm destined to spend a lot of time in Wolf's bed. _She just wished that he'd had the foresight to make a clone that she could curl up against.

She was starting to get lonely here by herself.


	16. Chapter 16

To make herself feel a little less lonely Naru moved herself around a little bit, ignoring the tiredness she felt along with the heaviness in her limbs. She walked around the apartment, observing the little things that Kakashi hid in plain sight. Like bits and pieces of his old Anbu uniform, his books, a bizarre movie collection.

He had an odd looking spoon that looked like it was an interigation tool, sitting on his kitchen counter and when she moved closer to get a better look at it she started to get that fuzzy feeling in her mind again. She moved around the counter and leaned down a little bit to rest her chin on the surface and caught the faintest scent of blood coming from the spoon as she got another more _vivid_ flash of something in her head.

She could hear the sounds of an distraught baby screaming and could make out two dark figures rolling around on the floor. one of the figures, a man with a heavy build and dark glittering eyes lay under a smaller more wirey built man in an Anbu uniform with wild silver hair.

Silver's mask had been broken in the struggle and his other mask, the clothe one had been partially shreded by the metal claws that the other man had been wearing.

His face was bleeding where the claws had dug into his skin just under his scarlet red eye and silver had the most murderous look on his face as he dug something out. It took Naru a moment to realize that silver had pulled the odd spoon sitting on Kakashi's counter out of his weapon's pouch as he snarled at the dark man under him.

_"You like hurting little kids. Let's see if you like being picked apart piece by piece-__"_ She saw him lift the spoon up so that it was level with the dark man's left eye and flinched as he drought the spoon down and forced it into-

The baby's crying got louder and without meaning too Naru moved to go see if the baby was okay since she couldn't see it in the same room as silver. She moved what coould have only been no more than a few steps from Kakashi's kitchen counter and found a little blond baby in a shreded shirt sitting on the floor covered in cuts and bruises.

The baby looked up at her with wide blue eyes and held it's little arms out to her, wanting her to pick it up.

Naru frowned at the implications of this situation because lit looked like the infant could _see_ her. _But this is just supposed to be a hazy memory of something that occurred many years ago, isn't it? _She wondered as she dropped down to one knee next to the child and started to reach for it when silver came tearing into the room looking furious and a mite crazed with the blood spattered across his face and neck.

He looked right at her and shouted, _"Hey! Get away from that baby!" _Naru jerked her head around to look at him, her vermilion red eyes wide and startled as she dropped her hands away from the child a little bit and pointed to herself and asked curiously.

"You can see me."

Silver snapped. _"Of course I can see you, your doing a piss poor job of hiding yourself." _

Naru gave him a bemused expression as she tried to figure out what exactly was going on, missing the calculating look that crossed Silver's face as he looked her over before demanding. _"Are you here to-" _That was about as far as he got before Naru's eyes rolled back in her head and she crumpled to the floor in a dead faint.

The last thing she heard was Silver shouting, _"Hey!"_ as he ran forward to catch her.

(***********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************)

Kakashi was still digging through the smoking remains of Naru's home after almost everyone else had gone home.

Sakura had decided to stay behind along with several others to dig through the ruins for anything that could be saved, however Kakashi didn't think that they would find anything more than what he held in his hands. So far he'd only managed to dig out the crinkled picture of team seven from it's earlier days.

It was a little bit damaged, the corner that had once held Sauske's image was completely gone. Leaving just his picture with Naru and Sakura. He was sure that Naru would want the picture back so he planned to take it to her until he could get it replaced.

It was nearing seven o'clock in the morning and everyone was worn out from all the shifting and digging through the ashes, the burnt wood, metal and glass and finally Kiba clapped his hands together, drawing all eyes to him and said, "Are we absolutely sure that Naru isn't in this mess somewhere?"

Kakashi shook his head at the dog nin. He'd already told the kids five or so times that Naru was safe and sound and _asleep_ at his place. "She wasn't home Kiba." Sakura said tiredly as she shuffled over to Kakashi and leaned into him for a second. A habit that she had developed when she was tired and he was close by.

Kakashi patted her back for a second as he straightened his spine and sighed. God he was tired. And from the looks of it the rest of the kids were too. "Everyone go home and get some rest. Then later if you want to come by my apartment and see Naru then you can do that." Everyone muttered and started off in different directions as Sakura moved away from him and asked.

"She's really okay sensei?"

"Have I ever lied to you about her well being before?"

"No."

"Then why would I start now? Go home Sakura. Get some rest while you can." Kakashi said as he made a shooing motion with his hand. Sakura gave him a sleepy look and staggered off. Kakashi didn't remember much about his trek home aside from getting dizzy at one point and having to stop moving until the feeling passed. After all the last thing he needed was to collapse after he'd just escaped Tsunade's damned hospital.

Especially when the woman would take great pains to make him utterly miserable. Still he managed to make it home after about twenty minutes or so and had just slipped into the apartment when he saw Naru laying sprawled on his living room floor either asleep or unconscious. _What the hell?_


	17. Chapter 17

"Naru. Naru. Honey wake up and tell me what your doing laying in the middle of my living room." Kakashi said as he lightly patted her cheeks with his free hand and waited for her to respond. He'd been at it for almost ten minutes since coming home and he still had _no_ fucking clue about what had happened to cause her to wind up unconscious in his living room floor.

But he was afraid that if she didn't respond to him soon, he'd have to take her to the hospital.

Naru twitched in his grasp and let out a small distressed sound before opening her eyes and looking at him. "Kashi?" He gave her a relived looking smile and stopped patting her face with his hand and instead shifted so that he could run his fingers through her hair, pushing it back from her face so that he could see her better.

"Hey. What happened to calling me wolfy, huh?" He asked in a half teasing tone as she blinked, still not all there just yet. But he knew the moment that she was all there. She nearly climbed over him to get up and look around. Nearly knocking him over into the coffee table in the process as she got to her feet and started moving around the room restlessly.

Her anxiety plainly showing in every step she took as she started babbling almost hysterically. "There was a man here. Man with a baby. He was covered in blood and-and the baby was crying-" Kakashi slowly got to his feet and watched her as she ran circles around his living room peeking over the back of the couch, glancing down the hall, checking the locks on his windows.

Just what the hell had her so rattled that she would feel the need to look for evidence of something having been there?

She stopped running around the room and looked at him, her eyes wide, her face a paler than it had been before when she'd shown up on his door step after the lightning had hit her home. "I was going to pick up the baby. It was scared-" Kakashi nodded his head understanding that if there had been a crying, scared infant in his apartment (though he had no idea how it could have gotten there) that it was only natrual that she would pick it up to try and comfort it.

"And the man- He came out of nowhere. Blood was everywhere in his face and neck, Kashi. Everywhere! And he _yelled_ at me..."

"Uh...okay..." Kakashi said, more or less at a loss about what to say.

Naru's comments about a man and a baby being in his apartment, while worrying to the Copy nin, might be nothing more than just a bad dream since there was only two people in the whole village that could get into his home when he wasn't there. Jiriaya and Naru herself.

And since Kakashi doubted that the Toad Sage would have swung by without him being there to open the door for him, and Naru had been unconscious on the floor, and there was no physical _evidence_ to support Naru's claim. Then the Copy nin would simply have to chalk up her experience to sleep walking or something while having a very vivid dream.

"Well, whoever they were, they aren't here now-" Kakashi said as Naru started to move around his living room again, this time slower as if she wanted to make sure that she hadn't missed anything. He watched her move around until she started to brush by him. Reaching out he grasped her upper arm in his hand and gently pulled her to a stop. "_Stop_. Walking around like that. You're making me paranoid."

And he felt far too tired to indulge his paranoia at the moment even if it would make her feel better. "The man scared me Kashi." Naru said as she stepped in closer to him and wrapped her arms around his waist and buried her face against his shirt. He sighed. Well hell, when she put it that way there was no way that he could simply ignore it.

It looked like he'd be putting his apartment on lock down for a little while so that Naru would feel less freaked out about what had happened. "Okay, Naru. I get it. Have a seat on the couch and let me lock the place down." He said as he carefully pried her arms out from around his waist and gave her a small nudge towards the couch.

She climbed onto it and sat down without so much as a peep as he walked over to his front door, slid the locks into place then started weaving hand signs for a protective barrier to be put in place around his apartment.

Once that was done he walked over to the chair and dropped himself down in it and was just a little startled when Naru climbed into his lap like she had been earlier and wrapped her arms around him and laid her head on his shoulder and muttered. "I feel safer now."

Kakashi's lips twitched in amusement despite the oddness of the situation as he ran his fingers through her long soft hair and said. "I'm glad you feel safer now Naru."


	18. Chapter 18

Kakashi must have fallen asleep with Naru nestled in his arms, clinging to him like he was her proverbial life line, because when he finally woke up he was laying partially on top of Naru with one hand resting over her right breast, his face buried against the hollow of her throat. He had a terrible crick in his neck and for some odd reason whenever he thought of trying to move, his fingers would flex.

Opening then closing a little bit around the soft mound of flesh that was pressing against his palm.

He knew that this was _horrible_ and _inappropriate_ for the situation.

Especially since Naru didn't seem to be awake to slap him or push him off of her. But he just felt so- well, _content_ at this moment that he was loath to move for any reason. No matter how uncomfortable the crick in his neck was. Or how his back was starting to ache a little bit.

He lay there for several more minutes after removing his hand from Naru's breast and simply enjoyed the feeling of having a soft pliant body under his own and finally sighed and planted his hands on either side of her head and pushed himself up a little bit and looked at Naru to make sure that he wasn't disturbing her.

The blasted woman was dead to the world. Her head was turned slightly to the left, no doubt to accomidate the position he'd had his head at a moment ago. Her pale reddish pink blond hair was a tangled mess around her face and shoulders, some of the strands hanging across her cheek sticking to the corner of her pink lips.

Kakashi snorted and used one hand to move the strands away from her mouth and nearly jumped out of his skin when she muttered something in her sleep then wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down as she turned her head just enough to...

Get him on the lips with a clumsy, yet well executed kiss that had the Copy nin frozen in place even when her arms finally fell away from his neck and she lay there_ still_ sleeping, unaffected by what she had just done to him.

Where as Kakashi was responding to the innocent act on levels that he hadn't even known he had.

His toes curled. His heart and mind were racing with dirty thoughts and ideas that a thirty year something year old man shouldn't have for an innocent twenty year old woman like Naru. To him it just seemed wrong to react to such a small thing like a kiss with such a state of high arousal.

And yet...he couldn't help himself. Naru was just- well, too cute for words. Even in her sort of borderline child like state. But because he felt too much like he was taking advantage of her, he couldn't help feeling guilty.

Which was why once he managed to collect his scattered thoughts enough, he removed himself from the couch just in time to take down the barrier and answer the door to let Neji, Shino, Shikamaru, Choji, Lee and Kiba into the apartment and after a few quick whispered words to tell them to try not to make too much noise or wake her.

He slipped his shoes back on and went out to get flowers or something to alleviate his guilty conscience for lusting after his former student.

Naru's eyes were open and she was sitting up the second that the door closed behind Kakashi. She groaned and rubbed her forehead under her hair, feeling a slight ache forming there from her earlier experience and rasped, "Kashi?"

"Kakashi-sensei is out running an errand, Naru. He said that we could sit and visit for a little bit to make sure that your really okay." Someone said from a few feet away. Naru turned her head and looked towards the source of the sound and smiled and gave a small finger wiggle in greeting as her friends came in closer. Three of them sat down on the corners of the coffee table a foot or so from her while the others hovered just behind them.

Naru recognized their faces. Knew that they were her friends and wouldn't hurt her, but for some odd reason she didn't feel the least bit comforted by that fact. They all looked far to lethal and menacing to her. Even Shadow looked a mite more menacing than he had several weeks ago.

Yet when he noticed the bandages on her hands and arms, his touch was very gentle, his concern evident in his expression as he grasped her arm just above the bandages and closely examined the area's around the wounds. "Do these hurt you any?" Shadow asked in a curious tone.

Naru looked down at her arms, at the bandages wrapped around her wounds and blinked as if she was surprised to find that she was wounded. "No. They don't hurt."

"Well that's something." Shadow said in a strange tone that made her cock her head as one of the others dug out a bamboo container and set it down next to Shadow's hip on the coffee table.

"That'll help it heal faster." The person with eyes like Quicksilver said as he gave her an awkward smile as he straightened his spine. Shadow picked up the container and held it out to her. Naru blinked and hesitantly took the container from his hand and flushed a little bit.

_Well. This was a little bit uncomfortable._ "Thank you." She said as she set the container aside and then folded her hands in her lap and sat there trying hard not to think about Kashi and where he might have gone off too.

(*************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************)

Kakashi walked into the Yamanaka flower shop to see Inoichi sitting behind the counter and cringed a little bit. _Crap_. Kakashi thought as he started to turn around and walk back out fo the store hoping that maybe he could find some nice wild roses and such in the woods surrounding the village that he could pick for Naru.

However Inoichi saw him and just before he could soundlessly slip out and disappear, and jumped to his feet and practically shouted, "Kakashi! What brings you here?"

_Well hell._ Kakashi thought in annoyance as the sound of Inoichi's booming voice froze him in place long enough for the man to manage to come up behind him and slip an arm around his shoulders. And dragged him further into the store as Kakashi sputtered and tried in vain to escape his grasp as the man started prattling about his wife and daughter before shifting over to the flowers in an effort to get Kakashi to buy some.

What he didn't seem aware of was the fact that Kakashi was mortified enough at being caught by one of his friends in the flower shop and he would have bought Naru the _whole_ fucking store if it would have shut the man up and made him let him go.


	19. Chapter 19

Kakashi was no fun. Inoichi thought in irritation as he sat back down behind the counter and waited for the Copy nin to finish prowling around his family's shop like a damned caged panther or something.

Here he was trying to be friendly and help the man and Kakashi was straight out _ignoring_ him.

Though Inoichi supposed that a man as closely guarded as Kakashi wouldn't have much to say about making a trip to a flower shop. Especially since he was in a percarious pisition right now with his retirement just another two weeks away and the council and Kage breathing down his neck, wanting him to get married.

No, Kakashi's need for silence and discretion were understandable to a degree though it would have been much smarter of the man to simply pick some flowers out of the woods. Especially since he'd no doubt be seen by some shinobi in the area, walking around with flowers which would start rumors that he'd already made his bride selection.

Which would kill some of the women in the village while driving others to attempt to find out who Kakashi had an interest in so that they could attack her.

Inoichi was about to suggest the Copy nin leave when he saw him stop by one of the bins and pick through some baby's breath then move over to another bin with purplish blue little bell shaped flowers then he grabbed a few sweet smelling large white flowers with waxy petals and fixed a little bouquet with them. Then after examining the bouquet for a moment or so he moved over to the counter and hastily pulled out his wallet and asked Inoichi if he could have a white and silver ribbon to tie the flowers together with.

Inoichi got up out of his chair again and moved over to a shelf behind him and pulled down several different silver and white ribbons and set them on the counter and got a slow, slightly mean look from the Copy nin as he grinned at him and said, "Which one? We have some plain ones with silver around the sides, some with little patterns-"

"Something nice-" Kakashi mumbled before growling. "And while your at it pick out a nice sturdy ribbon that I can use to strangle you with." Inoichi gave him an mock horrified look and laughed and moved back when the silver haired man actually tried to reach over the counter and grab him.

(************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************)

"Hey Naru, would you like to come to my place for dinner some time?" Kiba asked while he thought no one was paying attention. Immediately Neji and Shikamaru and Shino zeroed in on the Inuzuka's brazen, yet awkward question and seemed to hold their breath as they waited for Naru's response.

It already wasn't looking good for Kiba if the frown marring Naru's pretty face was any indication at all before she asked hesitantly. "Can wolfy come?" Kiba frowned and thought for a second before saying.

"Well, uh, I was asking you if you would like to hang out as like-"

"A couple-" Naru supplied helpfully. Kiba nodded then flushed as Naru suddenly said, "Then no. Dinner with you in that way would be inappropriate." Kiba looked confused as Neji and Shikamaru snickered as Shino moved around to sit on the arm of the chair and stared at her for a second before asking curiously,

"Having dinner with Kiba would be inappropriate? How so?" Naru turned her head and gave him her undevided attention.

"He's a male." Naru said as if that explained everything. Shino didn't seem to get it though. If anything he and the others were even more confused than ever. Naru made an impatient sound and rolled her eyes and hissed as a pink color spread across her pale cheeks. "He'll want to do _stuff_."

Kiba started to open his mouth to deny what Naru had just said but stopped when he saw Neji, Shikamaru and Lee give him a warning look and slowly shake their heads no. Silently telling him that keeping quiet would be in his best interest because if he tried to deny what Naru had just said, when they _knew_ that he'd had a crush on her since the Sauske incident, then they would have to take him outside and kick his ass every which way.

"Naru, doll, just because a guy asks you out to dinner doesn't mean that he wants to jump you." Shika said, trying to defuse a potentially disasterous situation.

"I know. But I can smell the pheramones lacing his blood. He has a much headier scent than normal due to this fact. Which is another reason why I say no. I don't want to have to break every bone in his body if he stepped out of line." _And then there was Kashi to consider._ Naru thought somberly. The last thing she wanted him to see was her getting pawed by a guy. Even if that guy was one of her friends.

It was simply unacceptable to her though she didn't quite understand the reasons why.

Kiba gaped at her for a second and flushed as Shino got up and took a few threatening steps towards him and growled something at him that Naru didn't really catch. Whatever it was though it embarrassed the hell out of Kiba who muttered to Naru that it was nice to have her back in the village again before he slipped out of the apartment.

Shino stayed behind just long enough to give Kiba a head start from the looks of things before he left.

Leaving Naru with Lee, Neji and Shikamaru who all sat down in various places in the living room, close to Naru and Kakashi's damned couch. "Well that was awkward." Lee said in amusement. Neji made a humming sound and glanced at Naru with a slightly calculating look on his face before asking.

"Naru, is there another reason that you didn't want to have dinner with Kiba? A more understandable reason perhaps?"

"Wolfy is particular about things-" Naru muttered before looking at him. "Sight, taste, touch- all play a small part. If I had come here smelling like someone else. Wolfy would never let me in again." The three frowned and cocked their heads to the side wondering what she meant though Shikamaru more or less got the gist of her words.

Soon after that Shika conned Lee and Neji into going with him to run some errands for Tsunade and left Naru alone in Kakashi's apartment after placing a small piece of a torn kerchief from his weapons pouch somewhere in the living room so that he could observe what might happen next.

Whatever it was, he'd bet that it would drive the Hatake up the walls with jealously.


	20. Chapter 20

_"Shika, didn't you say that you had to run some errands?" Neji asked as Shika peeked up over the small wall running around the roof to the building right across from Kakashi's. With a direct veiw of Kakashi's apartment. _

_"Yeah, yeah, errands- Later first both of you get down and watch too. I don't want to miss what might happen." Shika said absently as he reached up and grasped both Neji and Lee's shirts in his hands and pulled them down. _

_The two exchanged a bemused/curious look but did as Shika asked, also wanting to see what may happen between Kakashi and Naru._

(*****************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************)

Naru _knew_ Shika had done something before stepping out.

She could smell the sweat from the small piece of torn cloth. The scent of male, sweat and other things was making her nose itch like she needed to sneeze. She stood up and walked over to the table Shika had put something under and ran her finger tips along the under side of the table and felt a small piece of cloth. It was no bigger than the size of her thumb tip. Yet if she could smell it, Kashi would be able to smell it too.

And since the scent was driving her crazy- Well, she could only imagine what it would do to Kashi once he caught a whiff of it. She pulled it out and held it for a moment before using her chakra to incinerate it then after making sure that none of the ashes would catch the place on fire, she scooped them up and dropped them into one of Kashi's fake potted plants.

And walked back over to the couch and started to lay back down when the door opened and Kakashi stood there on the doorstep with a bouquet of flowers in his hands and an irritated look on his face. He started to take a step inside and then stopped, something unreadable flickering across his masked face as he tilted his head back and sniffed a few times then looked at Naru, his dark eye narrowing a little bit.

"Naru, why do I smell Shikamaru's sweat and other things in my home?"

Naru shrugged her shoulders and replied. "Probably because he was in your home. Sweating and such." Kakashi looked at her strangely for a moment then growled something and stepped through the door and slammed it closed as he set the flowers aside and walked over to her and grabbed her up off of the couch and buried his nose against her throat and sniffed a few times.

Naru squeaked and squirmed a little bit in his grasp, his breath was tickling her neck. She wiggled a little more and Kakashi let out a loud rumbling animalistic growl and pressed his face against her skin a little more firmly. Naru squeaked again as the tickling sensation faded and was replaced by something sharper and more wicked.

She shuddered and squeezed her thighs together in an effort to make it stop or stiffle it, but the strange feeling wouldn't be ignored. Trying to stiffle it did nothing but make the feeling _stronger_. She could sense that Kakashi was starting to catch on to her condition because of the sudden way he stiffened, his hands tightened a fraction making his grip on her almost painful.

His breathing pattern changed to this nice breathless pant that made Naru want to whimper as she lifted her hands and put them against his chest then pushed. He growled warningly, not wanting to let her go just yet. But Naru was determined and with a softly muttered oath stomped down on his foot causing him to yelp, jump and release her.

Giving Naru the chance that she needed to run out of the apartment like the hounds of hell were nipping at her heels. Her mind kept informing her, _It's not time yet!_ _It's_ _not time yet!_ While she kept wondering, _Time for what? _

Kakashi sat on the couch absently rubbing his sore foot and trying to figure out what had just happened with Naru. He didn't normally get grabby with women, not even the ones he showed interest in. But for some reason smelling Shikamarus scent in his home, so close to Naru had triggered certain instincts best left buried deep inside of him.

He could remember grabbing Naru before his mind went blank. His only thoughts were to pinpoint the scent and destroy it. But to do that first he had wanted to chack and make sure that the scent wasn't on Naru.

It had been. But it was very faint, mixed in with the scent of ashes. Kakashi had been trying to determin if he should act against the younger male when he'd smelled something else.

Something wonderful and mouth watering. Something that had made him want to purr and rub himself all over Naru until that scent clung to his skin. God it had been good. And so distinct that the moment he'd realized what he smelled, he had been shocked to his very core.

Naru had been aroused. Very much so, though he hadn't been able to tell if her arousal was a direct result of his presence or something else. He might have tried to find out. But she hadn't let things get far. She'd escaped him for now, but left him with something more to think about. He could wait until she came back before pressing his suit.

If she reacted to him favorably then he'd have his answers and perhaps something more as well.


	21. Chapter 21

Kakashi ripped his apartment apart after the little incident with Naru, looking for the sorce of Shikamaru's scent. And when he didn't find it, he broke down and scrubbed the place from top to bottom while he waited for Naru to come back while trying to come up with a plan to approach her as a man with interest in her as a woman.

It was a little harder than it should have been considering that he'd known her ever since she had been an infant. He kept thinking that maybe he was overstepping his bounds or something.

Or that she would have no interest in him as a man and potential mate because he was her former sensei.

By the time he was done cleaning and setting his apartment to rights, he was so tied up in knots that he couldn't sit still for more than two seconds before getting up again and pacing around. Morning passed into afternoon and Kakashi had started counting the ticking of the clock on his living room wall, literally counting the seconds until Naru's return when a soft rap at his window drew his attention.

(***********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************)

Naru wandered around the village for several hours trying to make sense of what had happened with Kakashi. But the more she thought about it the more frustrated she got. She didn't really understand what had happened. She knew what it meant, she _desired;_ wanted, possibly even longed to be with Kakashi.

But she just didn't understand the _why'_s of it. Why did she desire him? And when had she started to want him in such a way?

She made a huffing sound as her head started to hurt a little bit and sat down under a tree at the top of monument mountain and leaned herself against the trunk and closed her eyes as she wrapped her arms around her torso and drew her knees up against her chest in an effort to make herself more comfortable.

It had been thirteen days since she last rested and her body was starting to be affected by her need for sleep. She was getting headaches, lost her appitite for food, and she was_ irritable_.

Sure she had managed to keep her irritablility under control so far, but she'd nearly knocked Kakashi through his wall earlier when he hadn't let her go after she had pushed against his chest. And she knew that it was only a matter of time before she cracked someone's head open just to make them feel as out of sorts as she did right now.

But what was the absolute worst about this was her inability to think clearly about the answers to her questions. She knew that she had answers about what was going on with Kakashi. She'd thought about it in depth for the past week or so. She just never bothered to mention or write any of it down. Something that she was regreting more and more with each passing moment.

She needed something to remind her of her earlier thoughts _desperately_.

But forgetfulness and such aside all she was sure of was that she liked Kakashi on a deeper, more primitive level. She liked his strength, his warmth, his cunning, his fierceness and loyalty- And his body! Heaven above, for a thirty something year old, he had a wicked body that was built enough to inspire pleasant dreams and thoughts in all things female.

_I'm not terribly sure I like that thought. _Naru thought in wry humor as she opened her eyes and looked up at the sky._ Crap_.

It had been light outside just a little while ago and now it was getting dark. Had she really wandered around all day? She wondered as she slowly uncurled her body so that she could get up and was almost completely up off of the ground when an Anbu appeared and told her that she was being summoned to Tsunade's office.

Naru dusted herself off and waited for a moment to see if the Anbu was going to run off and leave her to find her own way, but after she was finally up again she looked at him and seemed a little bit bemused to find that he was still standing there. "Did someone tell you to escort me?" She asked curiously.

The Anbu nodded his head and said, "Lord Jiriaya said to escort you Nara-sama, to make sure that you didn't get lost."

Naru hummed and pulled her hood up over her head and muttered. "Smart man." Then motioned with her head for the Anbu to lead the way.

(**********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************)

Naru walked into Tsunade's office nearly an hour after she had been summoned to find Kakashi, and Sakura waiting for her while Tsunade looked over some papers on her desk before looking up and snapping at her. "Where on earth have you been? We've been waiting to get started for almost an hour and a half."

"Sorry." Naru said as she walked over to her former teammates and took up the empty space between the two and ignored the strange look Kakashi cast her way out of the corner of his eye as Tsunade started talking.

"Alright now that you're all here we can start. Since Kakashi's retirement is just another week or so away I've decided that the three of you will train together again until then. Kakashi will check your team work skills among other things to make sure that the two of you can still work together while trying to determine some depth of Naru's new abilities since sending you all out as you are might get the lot of you killed..."

"Once that is done I'll be assigning two new teammates for your ragtag team to replace Kakashi and Sauske. Your first mission once this is done will be to search for and if you can, retrieve Sauske Uchiha-" Naru held up a hand and jumped around in place for a second as Tsunade sighed and hung her head. What did her gaki want now? She wondered before growling, "Yes, Naru?"

"I need to go to the bathroom."

Tsunade sighed. "In a minute-"

"But it's really urgent Granny! I might pee on your nice clean floor."

"Ew. TMI." Sakura muttered in amusement while Kakashi put a hand over his mouth to stifle a laugh while Tsunade stared at Naru like she'd like to throttle her.

"Fine! Go! But you have three minutes to do your buisness and get back-" Naru grinned at her and ran out of the room so fast that she was a blur.

Once in the bathroom Naru walked over to the sinks and turned on the faucets as an idea formed in her mind. If retrieving Sauske was so important then maybe she could do it by going through that fuzzy mind thing again. After all those had only supposed to have been memories, yet they had interacted with her. So maybe she could try something like that again, thinking all the way back to the Valley of Ends where she could grab Sauske from the past and pull him into the present so that it would be like he had never left.

She sat down in the middle of the bathroom floor and closed her eyes as she took a deep breath, trying to calm the nervous beating of her heart as she focused entirely on the events of that day.

She started to get that fuzzy, muddled feeling and felt a smile curve her lips as an image of her former teammate/rival filled her mind. His dark eyes flashing with hatred and rage.

She focused on the moment when he was the most unaware of his surroundings. The moment he put his hand through her chest; and snuck up behind him and grabbed him as he pulled his hand out of her body and dropped her into the river.

He screamed and thrashed around in her grasp for a moment before turning his head just enough to look at her and shouted his anger at her as she laughed at how weak he felt to her and focused on the village as he kept trying to break her grip.

Both never noticing the silver haired man watching the scene from the ridge above, with an perplexed expression on his face as they vanished into thin air. _What the hell? _


	22. Chapter 22

_What the hell? _Kakashi thought as he started to feel dizzy.

He lifted a hand his head and tried to breathe through it but the feeling of dizziness persisted until he felt like he was going to hurl as vague images of the Valley of Ends, Sauske and...an _unknown_ hooded figure flashed through his mind.

That wasn't right, was it? He wondered as the feeling got strong enough to force him down to a kneeling position before Sakura and Tsunade noticed that something was up.

"Kakashi, what's wrong?" Tsunade demanded in a slightly alarmed tone as she started to get up out of her seat as Sakura dropped down next to her former sensei and put a hand on one of his shoulders and waited like that for a moment or so as Kakashi finally got the feeling that the dizziness had passed and unsteadily stood back up.

"Nothing. It was nothing-" Both Tsunade and Sakura looked unconvinced. But honestly what could he say to them? That he was experiencing a strange phenomenon with his memories and feeling as if something big was going down. They would likely laugh him right out of the office. Or worse, question his sanity.

Hell, even he was starting to question_ his_ sanity at this point.

Tsunade got up out of her seat and walked around her desk to stand in front of him and looked him over. For a moment he refused to look at her, a sure sign that something was going on with him. He merely didn't want to mention it out of fear that he would look weak or something. "Kakashi, come to the hospital tomorrow morning and have a physical-"

He looked at her and was about to say no when she smirked at him and said, "This isn't a request." He sighed and nodded his head and muttered under his breath, a frown on his face as Tsunade looked at the clock hanging on the wall to their left and growled in irritation.

_"Where the hell is Naru?"_

(**********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************)

Naru and Sauske hit the tile floor of the women's restroom in the Tower with a resounding thud as Sauske's bones started the painful transformation of changing from that of a fifteen year old to a twenty year old. Naru pushed herself upright as she heard the sickening crack of some of his bones as they lengthened and expanded, she saw his skin raise up and move like tiny waves as his blood and organs all rearranged themselves to fit the current time stream.

His features grew sharper, more darkly handsome, his hair lengthened-

Naru rubbed her sore knee- The one that she had cracked on the floor when they had fallen and shifted so that she was sitting back on his haunches next to him and he tried to scream. Tried being the operative word since his bady was in so much pain that coherant sound would definately _not_ happen anytime soon. Especially with his vocal cords paralyzed by the sudden change.

She waited for what must have felt like forever, but was in fact just a few minutes before deciding to take pity on him and reached out and put him to sleep before grabbing one of his arms and pulling him up just enough to slip an arm around him and maneuver him up onto one of her shoulders and slowly stood up.

Tsunade and the others would be so surprised to see Sauske again so soon. The very notion of the soon to be reunion made her giggle as she made her way to the door and slipped out.

(**********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************)

Tsunade turned around and stopped in mid rant as Naru slipped into her office with what looked like a person slung over one of her shoulders and a thoroughly happy look on her partially hidden face. "Yo." Naru said, mimicking Kakashi's habitual greeting, further upsetting the Kage.

"Yo yourself brat. I told you to be back in three minutes. It's been seven! And just who the hell is slung over your shoulder?" Tsunade all but shouted at Naru, a vein appearing in her forehead to indicate her anger.

Naru looked slightly taken aback and promptly dropped the person and stepped back as Sauske hit the floor at her feet and groaned in his sleep as Kakashi and Sakura (both apparently recognized the raven) gaped at her in shock and dismay as Tsunade stomped over and grabbed Sauske and started to shake him when she realized who he was and let go of him, causing him to fall back to the floor as all eyes suddenly fixated on her.

"How did-" Tsunade started to say as Naru giggled again and said.

"I found him and brought him home."

"How is that- When did-"

"I lied when I said I had to pee. I used the bathroom as an excuse to track Sauske and drag him back. It was very easy. And now we don't have to look for him." Tsunade, and Sakura gaped at her as Kakashi narrowed his eye at her. His mind working overtime trying to figure out what had just happened. Not just with Naru but with his memories as well.

He looked over Sauske and noted that his clothes were so tight that they were torn in some places, the colors and design were exactly the same as the clothes he'd worn the day he had left the village. _What was going on here?_ He wondered as he looked back at Naru and for a brief moment he felt totally stumped by what he was seeing.

Naru's hooded figure seemed to blur and merge together with the person he'd seen in his memories. That hooded jacket of hers was a dead give away. It was exactly the same as the one he remembered seeing it on the person who had grabbed Sauske. But if he recalled this, why didn't Tsunade? Or Sakura?

Why was it just him? Naru looked at him and smiled faintly and lifted a finger to her lips and Kakashi felt as if he'd just been punched.

_Holy shit_, she knew!


	23. Chapter 23

Are you all ready for a headache kittens? Cause this chapter will certainly give you one.

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After Tsunade had Sauske taken away, and had regained her ability to speak she then called Jiriaya to her office and with him, Kakashi, and Sakura, started to question Naru on how she had manged to find and bring Sauske back in just seven minutes. She wanted to know how she had managed to leave the village and get back in such a short amount of time.

Naru sat in the chair that she had been directed too and was watching Tsunade pace back and forth in front of her like a tiger. "Alright Naru, what kind of jutsu did you use to pull this fiasco off? A teleportation? A space-time? You do know that many of these jutsu's are forbidden because they can rip a person's body apart right?"

Naru glanced at Jiriaya who sat behind Tsunade's desk, on the window sill. His arms were crossed and he had a peculiar look on his face that she recalled after she woke up. That look that questioned if she was still human enough to be herself.

That questioning look that more or less showed her his worries and fears.

She _hated_ that look with a passion. Really she did. "No jutsu. No time-space. Sauske is a _manifistation_ of the person I remember. The changes his body are going through now will make him similar enough to the Sauske you want returned; to take his place in this time stream."

Tsunade looked at her funny then lashed out with her foot and kicked one of Naru's chair legs and sent the blond scooting across the floor in the seat. Once it came to a stop Naru made a huffing sound and muttered under her breath, "Crazy old bat should pay attention. One day will end us all..."

"What the hell did you just say brat!" Tsunade shouted, causing Naru to squeak and slap her hands over her ears to block out the loudness of Tsunade's voice and waited until it died down before lowering her hands and getting up out of her chair and tried to shout back. But her voice wouldn't co-operate so her voice came out as nothing more than a dark raspy whisper.

"I said, crazy old bat _should pay attention_! I know that you probably won't get this- But I've just saved you from burying over a _third_ of the village population both shinobi and citizen alike!" The whole lot of them recoiled from her in horror and dismay, unable to fully understand what she was saying or how she even knew that something so catastrophic would take place.

Sakura opened her mouth to ask Naru those questions when the woman cut her off with a sharp almost menacing look as she contined. "The Sauske you want back is an impossible, and spoiled person who would start a new shinobi war. The person I brought to you is still worth saving! The other one isn't. So before Sauske-chan wakes, seal his sharigan and his chakra away. Weaken him without killing him and let him spend the rest of his life _helpless_. It's a fitting punishment for one so vain."

"You know for sure that Sauske would do those things?" Tsunade finally asked in a shakey voice, her mind reeling. Naru nodded her head and stared at her as if she'd like to shake her.

"I would not lie about something like that. Lying would be stupid and ill minded. It would cost others greatly and _I'll just not do it_. Even if it means hurting some of you. Lying to you at this point to spare your feelings would only get someone killed." Naru said quietly as she glanced from one face to another expecting some negitive emotions, perhaps denial or anger, yet all she found was acceptance through partially concealed hurt.

_Well this is unexpected._ Naru thought warily. Now that she had made them understand a small degree of what she knew, she wasn't sure what to do. "So tha t Sauske that I was going to send you after is no good. And the Sauske that you brought here was a manifistation of-"

"My memories. I caught him at the point where he was still innocent enough to be saved and brought him back here. "

"But doesn't that make him a fake? Like a shadow clone?" Jiriaya asked curiously. Naru shook her head no.

"No. He's the same person we all remember, he's just missing some skills that he would have gotten out of Oro-teme's training."

"But he's changing. I remember hearing you say that he was changing." Naru nodded.

"He is. The Sauske I brought here was fifteen in my memory. To become the Sauske that we lost, he has to grow and his mind must expand to fit the knowledge being crammed into it. Once he wakes up he'll be similar to the Sauske that has been with Orochimaru. He'll have the knowledge and skills. But he will still be innocent like he was when he was fifteen. That's why I said to seal his sharigan and chakra away. If you do, he'll have all that knowledge and skill yet no way to use it. His threat to us and the village with be minimal if it even exists at all."

"And the Sauske that has been with Orochimaru? What will happen to him?"

Naru giggled like a crazy person. "He'll disappear into _our_ Sauske."

"And what of Orochimaru? Will he come here looking for our Sauske once his disappears?" Sakura finally asked once she finally found her voice. Naru tilted her head to the side a little bit and made a humming sound before saying cheerfully.

"Probably, but you let me worry about that. I'll make sure that he doesn't step foot in the village. Okay."


	24. Chapter 24

After explaining things to Tsunade and the others on how she had finally brought Sauske home, Tsunade had them go out and do a few training exercises to make sure that they could still work together as a team, then sent them off on their way once it was established that Naru; for all her power had no real need or interest in using it for much of anything at all from the looks of things.

She and Sakura had run from Kakashi almost all night before the exercise ended. Which meant to Kakashi, Jiriaya and Tsunade that the whole Sauske thing was more or less a _fluke_.

Not an outright abuse of her power.

Just something small that she had thought would make things simpler on everyone. And to a degree she was right however due to the peculiar nature of the ability she had used to bring Sauske home, Tsunade had tried to ring a promise from Naru that she wouldn't use that ability again.

But Naru had refused merely stating that it was an ability that would be very useful in the future.

She didn't say anything more though she did raise one hand and hold up five fingers and said, "Just five more times then I'll promise you anything you need me too. And I'll stick to my word, but I need this ability just five more times." No one else had said anything more about it figuring that if she was using the knowledge that Kyubbi had given to her, then she must have her reasons.

After that Tsunade mentioned having Naru stop by the hospital for a physical so that she could document any abnormalities in her body, at which point Naru visibly cringed and looked away from the Kage's unwavering stare, nervously and muttered something under her breath about needing to get some lighter fluid and matches to get rid of something.

Sakura and the Copy nin wanted to question Naru about her mutterings but the damn girl more or less ran off the second Tsunade dismissed them.

(********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************)

Kakashi staggered into his apartment a short time later and striped off his flank vest, his shoes, gloves, headband and mask as he flicked on the lights and was about to head back to the bathroom when he turned and nearly jumped out of his skin when he noticed Naru sitting on the arm of his couch with her legs crossed and a slightly bemused look on her pretty face.

Kakashi put a hand against his chest to try and calm the frantic beating of his heart as he glared at her in mock irritation and said in a breathless voice, "Naru baby, you're going to have to start making noise when you appear somewhere or one day you're have an accident." He closed the door and frowned before asking. "What are you doing here? Didn't you run away earlier?"

"I have nowhere else to go. Besides, I like it here. I have good company when I'm here..." Kakashi gave her an _uh-huh_ look and she sighed. "You have questions about what is going on with your memory. I thought I would try to answer them. But you shouldn't get your hopes up. I'm honestly not sure how much help I'll be."

Kakashi cocked his head and gave her a calculating look then asked. "So you really are aware of what's going on with my memory? Even though I never mentioned it? To anyone?"

"It's because my memories are directly linked to some of your own. Your memories of me as a child and my memories of you as a man that I look up too. Our thoughts of one another, the depth of our feelings for one another- These things _link_ us in more than one way. Because of this...you are experiencing some anomalies."

"Are they harmful? I've felt dizzy twice already-" He stopped talking as his mismatched eyes widened a second before he shouted. "Twice! Naru did you do something before? Is that why I got dizzy the other day? Tell me! What did you do?"

Naru flinched a little bit and partially lifted her hands to put them over her ears but was stopped when he grabbed her wrists and pulled her arms down as he invaded her personal space. Her face turned a lovely shade of pink as she looked up at him, his face was just inches from her own and just for a second Naru could see this strange heated look on his face as he stared down at her, waiting for an answer.

She swallowed past the lump in her throat and shook her head and lowered her head as she said in her softest tone. "I didn't do anything. That time was an accident."

"But something _did_ happen." Kakashi said in a chidding tone. Naru didn't say anything. She figured that he'd recall his memory of her trying to pick up her infant self and yelling at her not too, soon enough.

"What happened between us earlier? Before I stomped your foot?" Naru asked suddenly, trying to steer their conversation in a more interesting direction. Kakashi glared at her for a second then sighed. Damn the little foxy chit for asking about that so suddenly.

Now his entrie thought process was consumed with nothing but the need to test the waters and see in what way Naru saw him. "What do you think happened Naru?"

"I'm not sure. For a moment, I felt like I feel every three months-" Kakashi cocked his head and considered her words as she continued speaking. "I felt a very intense need."

"What sort of need?"

"I'm not sure. I've only felt that way once or twice after I woke up but I don't recall much of either experience because Jiriaya kept me unconscious until the feeling went away." Kakashi frowned at her words and made a mental note to speak with Jiriaya about Naru's 'need' at the earliest convenience as he let go of her wrists and stepped back away from her and headed towards the kitchen to fix some small something for dinner before he bothered to ask.

"Are you planning to stay?"

Naru turned on her heel so quickly that she nearly fell over the coffee table as she yelped, "Yes!"


	25. Chapter 25

Later that evening after a nice quiet dinner and a shower, both Kakashi and Naru were curled up on the couch watching Tv when Kakashi asked curiously out of the blue. "Naru have you ever liked someone so much that you wanted to be with them all the time?" The second his question was out of his mouth, Kakashi visibly cringed and closed his eyes and thought. _Smooth, idiot. Just freak the girl out to the point where she never wants to be close to you again. _

Naru looked up from her semi reclining position against Kakashi's side, her hand still wrapped around his wrist, holding his arm across her neck. _What an odd question_. She thought as she ghosted her fingers along the inside of his wrist along one of the veins, causing him to twitch before she answered. "No. Never felt that way. Why?"

"I was just wondering if you had ever felt that way before. I thought that maybe if you had, you might be able to clue me in on how that would feel... It would make it easier to find a wife if I couldn't stand to be seperated from her, ya know."

Naru hummed and nodded her head in understanding. "I guess not knowing what something like that feels like would make things a little problimatic for you."

Kakashi looked down at Naru and smiled faintly. "Yeah. Just a little bit." He said as he ran the fingers of his free hand through her hair while thinking how nice it would be if Naru could be his wife.

He was comfortable with her, and despite her innocence she would make a good mate and mother. She certainly seemed to be comfortable enough with his presence to stay with him and let him closer to her person than he should be.

The hours slipped by bit by bit and both Kakashi and Naru seemed reluctant to leave each other's side until finally at about three in the morning, the exhausted Copy nin managed to talk Naru into going to bed by promising that he'd sleep with her in the bed.

He meant for it to be just a simple time for them both to get some sleep and rest but what the Copy nin hadn't counted on was Naru's sleep cuddling and grinding. One moment she was curled up in his arms, completely content with the slight touching between their bodies and the next he was being woken from a sound sleep by Naru pressing her bottom against his crotch and sort of moving her bottom along his semi hardened length.

But what really had the Copy nin's blood pressure going through the roof was when he tried to ignore the grinding and suddenly felt Naru's hand slip down the front of his pants and wrap her fingers around him.

He came up out of the bed so fast that he shucked his sweats just to get away, waking Naru from an apparent sound sleep in the process. She raised up and rubbed one eye while staring at him blankly with the other and grunted before asking. "What are you doing?"

Kakashi sputtered in mortification and slapped his hands over his crotch to give himself some modesty though he was fairly certain that she wasn't really paying attention and ground out in a sleep rough voice. "What am I doing? What the hell were you doing?"

"Sleeping."

"Sleeping my ass! You put your hand down my pants!" Kakashi nearly shouted.

Naru seemed to wake up just enough to look insulted. "Did not."

Kakashi gave a hysterical sounding half laugh, half snort. "Did too!"

"Well you can't prove it. And anyone you tell will think your lying, I'll deny everything. So shut up, take a cold shower and come back to bed." Naru said in an impatient tone as she flopped back down on the bed and made herself comfortable while Kakashi gaped at her in comical disbelief.

Dear god did she even realize what having him come back to bed could do to her? She could be preganant by morning! _Especially if she doesn't stop that damn rubbing_ _and grinding._ He thought darkly as he ransacked his dresser in his effort to find some cotton briefs and some new sweats to wear.

Naively thinking that if he had more than one layer of clothing on that Naru wouldn't be able to disturb him again.

He was proven wrong of course when he was woken up again after several hours of tossing and turning on the bed next to the girl. When he felt something warm and _wet_ like a tongue tickling his bare stomach just above the waist of his sweats and briefs. He cracked open his eyes and blinked against the soft light filtering through his bedroom window and turned his head to see if Naru was still asleep next to him.

He was only faintly surprised to find her spot in bed empty and she herself was missing from that specific place. He felt something hot and damp close around his morning erection, just for a second, he could feel the soft pull as the fabric was sucked on and raised up on his elbows to see what was going on and saw the top of Naru's head level with his crotch and whimpered.

_Oh dear god- _"Naru! Naru! What are you doing?" He hissed as he jerked when he felt her sharp little teeth nip at him through his clothes. Naru lifted her head a little bit and used one arm to pin him down when he tried to move himself out from under her and looked at him through the thick silken mess of hair as she nipped at him again.

She didn't know what was wrong with her in that moment, this was a mite embarrassing to her but for some odd reason the same need that had frightened her before had come back and she hadn't been able to resist trying to taste Kashi's body in some small way. Running away was out of the question this time, and was pointless to try anyways. She'd just come back again.

And he'd just been laying there doing nothing after all, while she on the other hand had felt as if she were losing her mind.

She felt his fingers slip through her hair and fist in the thick strands and tugged. Leaving her no choice but to move where he wanted her to or she would lose some hair that she was rather attached too. She lifted her head and looked at him as he carefully shifted his body so that he was sitting up, their faces were so close that she could feel the warmth of his breath and she wondered what he was thinking as her eyes drifted closed for a moment before opening them again and catching his puzzled frown as she rasped.

"That feeling is back..."

"The one from before?" He asked stupidly.

She nodded her head, winching a little when she wound up pulling some of her hair a little bit. He abruptly let go of her hair and let her sit up so that she was facing him and asked. "What does it feel like Naru?"

"Does it matter?" She asked curiously as he snorted.

"Naru, you just woke me out of a sound sleep trying to initiate a blowjob despite the fact that I'm clothed. _It matters_. Now tell me exactly what you're feeling in as vivid detail as possible."

"I hurt." Naru said in a breathy tone that did funny things to Kakashi's heart.

"Hurt how? I can't help you if I don't know what's wrong." Naru shifted so suddenly, coming up on her knees and grabbed one of his hands, startling him. As she put his hand against one of her breasts, using her fingers to close his hand over the soft mound. Kakashi's eyes widened in shock at her bold move before she took his hand away and slipped it between her legs and pressed the heel of his hand against the slit between her legs and let her head fall back as a breathy moan escape her throat.

Kakashi's mind went blank as his jaw went slack and fell open. Naru lifted her head to look at him again, a faint blush coloring her pale cheeks and she licked her lips with the tip of her tongue and ground out, "I hurt here."

_Well she can't get any more discriptive than that, can she?_ Kakashi finally thought as soon as he managed to pull himself together enough to remove his hand from between her legs and grabbed her slender shoulders and pulled her closer and touched his lips to her cheek as he whispered, "Do you want me to make you feel better?"


	26. Chapter 26

Kakashi looked down at Naru, laying on her back with his button up shirt gaping open all the way down to her waist, and gave her an encouraging smile in an effort to help alleviate some of her fear and nervousness as he skimmed his fingers along her arms until he reached her hands. He kissed her finger tips, her palms, the inside of her wrists-

He could see her body trembling slightly as she tried hard not to touch him like he'd asked. The last thing he needed was to act like a horny teen and fuck things up to the point where they couldn't be fixed. He doubted that she'd ever let him near her again if he did something like that.

Which was why he was going so slow with her.

This was an initiation. A coming of age sort of thing that indicated that if she wasn't ready for a relationship before, she very well might be now since she was trusting him with her body in a way that was totally foreign to her. And because he had his questions about their compatability, this was the most honest and effective way to get his answers while showing her that he could be a very patient and considerate mate.

She watched him anxiously as he released her hands and leaned over her, his face mere inches from her own.

"Is it okay if I kiss you?" He asked hesitantly, as if he was uncertain if she would let him. She nodded her head and he gave her a quick wolfish smile before leaning his head down a bit more and capturing her lips in a soft yet passionate kiss.

Naru made a strange sound in the back of her throat the second his lips touched hers and started to raise her arms to grasp his shoulders, but he was one step ahead of her and grasped her hands and pinned them to the bed on either side of her head as he slanted his mouth over hers and ran his tongue along her lower lip to see how she would respond.

She parted her lips for him and shivered as he deepened the kiss until her lungs burned from the lack of air. She twitched violently and made a distressed sound forcing Kakashi to break the kiss to see what was wrong. "Am I going too fast?" He panted as he ran his tongue across his lower lip, tasting the lingering sweetness of her lips as she took several deep breaths and shook her head before muttering.

"Couldn't breathe." He blinked at her and chuckled in amusement and shook his head.

"Silly girl. Breathe through your nose." He said before he sealed his lips over hers again, this time refusing to come up at all until he had explored the moist cavern thoroughly before pulling back so that he could trail small open mouthed kisses along the curve of her cheek to her jaw then lower along her neck until he had her squirming under him as he let go of her hands.

He put his hands on her, on either side of her ribs just an inch or so from under her arms and leaned his head down to lick the swell of one of her breasts, working his way down to her nipple before sucking the pebbled pink tip into his mouth.

Naru cried out and arched her back up off of the bed a little bit in an effort to get closer to him and the wonderful warmth of his mouth as she felt his teeth close around the sensitive nub and pull a little bit before releasing it so that he could pay the same attention to her other breast as he placed his hand over the one that he'd just left so that he could knead it before moving lower.

He kissed his way down her stomach and paused when she started to giggle and squirm. "Tickles?" He asked in amusement. Naru shuddered and made a strained sound that he took for a yes.

_Of course it tickled-_ Naru thought as he ran his fingers lightly along her ribs causing her to jerk and laugh harder. He was touching her stomach! Her stomach had always been weak against tickle attacks. And it was starting to look like her ribs weren't much better.

"S-S-Stop! C-Can't breathe!" Naru cried between fits of laughter. Kakashi made a rumbling sound and stilled his hands, gripping her hip with one while skimming the fingertips of the other along the waist band of her panties for a moment and looked at her face. Seeking permission.

Naru's breathing hitched and she looked at him, her expression a little bit anxious before saying. "No going all the way." He cocked his head wondering what she meant yet at the same time understanding that she had just set a limit for him.

Going all the way wasn't what she wanted at this moment. She just needed a little bit of relief. Understanding now what she wanted Kakashi slipped his hand inside of her panties and lightly touched her clit.

Naru jumped at the unexpected jolt of pleasure that raced through her body and bit down on her lower lip to keep from making any sound but couldn't stop the whimper that escaped her throat as she felt his fingers part her silken folds and stroke her until she came.

Kakashi knew the exact moment that Naru came for him, he could hear it in the small whimpers that escaped her. He could see it in the shocked/stunned/startled look on her face as she closed her thighs around his hand and trembled as she panted for air. He leaned over her and kissed her on the lips, needing to steal her breath in that moment more than he needed the air he breathed.

This was how he was supposed to spend the rest of his days on earth. There was only one thing that could make this experience more perfect. But he didn't bother to voice his thoughts, he felt for the moment that this was enough yet Naru seemed to know what he was thinking.

She reached out and hooked a hand around his nape and held his mouth in place over hers and kissed him breathless as she slipped her free hand along his body.

Feeling the smoothness of his skin, the hard muscle of his chest and stomach then lower where she slipped her hand inside of his clothes and wrapped her fingers around the hard throbbing length that he had been trying to hide so much this past while, and stroked him. He groaned and shuddered as she sucked on his tongue and bucked his hips sub consciously, seeking some relief of his own.

Naru loosened her hold on his nape and let him come up for air just long enough to wrap a leg around him and push him over onto his back so that she could crawl on top of him.

(*********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************)

Ha-Ha! Bet you all thought I was going to keep going, huh. Well easier said than done. This chapter took forever to write due to the awkwardness of it all.

Not to worry though, Kashi got more than what he bargained for. I'll write more about it in flashbacks off and on as I go so that you see a little more of Naru when she's being guided by instinct.

Now- I'm off to try writing the next chapter which takes place around the time of the physical. It should be pretty funny since Naru's planning to pull some stuff.


	27. Chapter 27

I apologize for the length of this chapter in advance.

My head is killing me and I'm not totally sure but I think I've already had three seizures. I still feel a mite dizzy and sick to my stomach.

So I'm going to get off of here for a little bit until I feel better. I'll be back on in a little bit. Till then, enjoy.

(*****************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************)

Naru was breathing down his neck again for the fifth time in the past hour since they had gotten up out of bed. And though it was a little bit disconcerting to him, he knew _why_ she was doing it.

Like him she had gotten up this morning with a vague sense of disbelief and wondered if they had really initiated in foreplay with each other. Kakashi knew that they had because he still felt the warm, weak-in-the-knees effect that only really good sex or a few really, _really_ good orgasms caused.

Couple that with his photographic memory of the night before- along with the reddish marks littering his neck, shoulders and inner thighs and, yeah, even he couldn't deny that something _huge_ and life altering had happened between them.

Naru felt it too. Obviously.

He was sure of this since she kept hooking a finger in the collar of his navy colored long sleeved cotton shirt and tried to peek at the marks she'd placed on him.

It was a cute reaction to this mornings events, really. That and the fact that every time he looked at her, she would blush and get a deer caught in the headlights look on her face before he would grin at her and mess up her hair then walk off.

He'd been uncertain of things earlier, after first waking up and had asked her if she regretted giving herself over to him and had been pleasantly surprised by telling him that she trusted him with her body far more than she trusted anyone else. This information was incredibly telling to the Copy nin since he had finally started to realize that his heart was entangled in this situation.

Still...

He waited until Naru was right behind him and could almost feel her finger ghost over the skin of his nape when he reached back and grabbed her and pulled her over his shoulder and into his lap and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek before she could even think to react. "You need to learn not to breathe down my neck like that." He said in a mock stern tone as he held her close to his chest.

Naru grunted and held perfectly still for a moment before grousing. "I wouldn't have to breathe down your neck if you'd just let me see the marks." He chuckled in amusement.

"_And I told you_- I'd let you see the marks if you would let me mark you too."

"Wha? But that's not fair!"

"Oh? How is it not fair, Naru?" Kakashi asked curiously as he nuzzled the curve of her jaw.

"It's not fair cause you get to see them! And me, I'm just like everyone else. I can't see them and if I can't see them then how will I know they're there?" Kakashi started laughing. He couldn't help himself. Naru was getting frazzled over nothing. Yet at the same time he sort of understood her feelings.

They were similar to his own.

She needed to be able to see- and have everyone else see the marks she had left on his skin or it would drive her crazy. Not only that but if he was approached by another woman, she might get territorial and attack her.

Or at least that was the impression she gave him. While he felt the intense need to mark her as his in a _very_ bad way. His need was so strong that the gums around his canines were aching. However he knew that if he and Naru both were walking around the village with marks on their skin then someone from the council might try something to force him to name his bride.

And since Naru wasn't ready yet, he'd try his damndest to avoid naming her as his future bride until he was certain that she wanted to be with him as much as he wanted to be with her.

He felt a slight tug on his vest and was jolted out of his thoughts as he looked down at her. "Do we have to go to the hospital?"

"For our physical's today. Yes, I'm afraid so." Naru curled her lip back from her teeth in a silent snarl, apparently not liking the fact that they had to go to the hospital any more than he did. But orders were orders. And he knew enough to know that if they didn't show up Tsunade would tear the village apart personally just to find them and drag them there and make them miserable.

"Come on now, it won't be that bad. They'll do a blood test. Look us over. Listen to our hearts. Make us pee in a cup-"

"Make you masterbate into a cup to check your semen production number-" Naru said dryly as Kakashi's visible eye twitched a little bit as he lightly smacked his hands against her cheeks then pinched. Naru yelped and grabbed his wrists as he flushed a nice reddish color and growled, embarrassed.

_"That is none of your buisness." _

"But I'm not wrong..."

"Still not your buisness, Naru." Kakashi said in a warning tone before he let go of her cheeks and leaned in to touch his forehead to hers before standing up and setting her on her feet so that he could go get his headband, gloves, mask and shoes on so that they could leave before Tsunade sent the Anbu after them.


	28. Chapter 28

Naru sat in the small room where she was to be examined with a sense of unease.

Thanks to the fact that Tsunade had more or less ordered her to be here she could only assume that Jiriaya hadn't bothered to tell the Kage about some of her...internal changes when he had been filling her in on some of her other changes.

Like the changes in her organs and their placement in her body, her soft tissues, and such. So when Sakura walked in with Shizune, Naru was feeling more than a little bit skittish about this whole affair. But since she knew that she had no choice but to go through with it, she folded her hands in her lap and decided to grin and bear it to the best of her ability.

"Hello Naru!" Shizune said cheerfully as she walked over to her and gave the younger woman a hug before moving away leaving her sitting there with an uh-huh sort of look on her pretty face as Sakura pulled out some things that she would use to conduct the physical before saying.

"Okay. Naru you've been through this before so you already know the routine. So try to relax and let me do this so I can get you out of here as soon as possible."

_Easier said than done._ Naru thought darkly as her heart stuttered and stopped in her chest as Sakura pulled out a stethoscope and put the ear pieces in her ears as she walked across the room and stopped in front of Naru and placed the instrument against her chest and waited several heart beats as Naru looked away nervously and waited for the inevitable explosion.

Which happened barely two seconds later when Sakura let out a shriek and pushed Naru flat on the narrow little table/bed thingy and fairly shouted. "Her heart's stopped! She's coding! Get a machine in here now!"

Naru lay on her back staring up at the ceiling with the same nervous look on her face as Shizune went tearing out of the room while Sakura leaned over her and put an oxygen mask over her nose and mouth and started babbling.

_Oh...dear... _She thought wearily, unsure of what she could do to get herself out of this situation since her heart only beat a few hours per day now. Leaving her infinite chakra to convert itself partially into blood and push itself through her body to carry oxygen where it needed to go while her heart took a rest to keep from over working itself.

She supposed that to get out of this she would just have to let Sakura and Shizune try to restart her heart. And when they failed, well she could always play dead and escape the morgue via one of the windows.

Of course even if she did that to escape there _were_ draw backs. One of which was her friends would be informed of her 'death' which meant that there would be a lot of people shocked, surprised, and stunned by her miracle resurrection.

Not only that but some people might think she's an enemy trying to blend in and learn the village secrets by taking her own identity. Which meant that she would be risking being attacked...

_Hm, choices, choices. Oh well._ As much as a problem as it was, she didn't see any other choices.

(*****************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************)

Tsunade was momentarily distracted from her urge to smack Kakashi upside the head for his latest act of defiance when she heard a series of shouting and yelling going on and peeked out the door just in time to see Shizune running by, her face ashen, pushing a dephib machine.

She might have asked what was wrong but figured that she'd find out sooner or later if someone was hurt when she finished with Kakashi and started her rounds. So she closed the door and turned her attention back to the infuriating, unco-operative man sitting on the exam table with his arms crossed over his chest. His mismatched eyes glaring at her.

"Hatake, we've been over this. You need to go through will all of these tests to make sure that your really healthy." Tsunade growled.

Kakashi looked less than impressed by her explanation as she picked up the plastic cup and again tried to hand it to the him. He looked at it like it was a bug.

"Tell me Tsunade, you only do this test from time to time so that you could store away some of my seed in case I was killed in the line of duty. So who exactly ordered this test to be done every week for the next month?"

"The council-"

"Is over stepping their bounds. My sex drive and semen count are no one's business except for mine and my future wife. And if those old fools keep pushing,_ my lady_-" He snarled, surprising Tsunade with his venom. "Then not only will I refuse to marry but I will also refuse to sire offspring until the council and _everyone_ on it are cold in their graves."

Tsunade gaped at him and was about to order him to do as she told under penalty of death or something when they heard shouting coming from the room down the hall where Naru was supposed to be.

Kakashi jumped down from the table and walked over to the door and opened it and nearly ran into a hysterical Shizune when he started to peek out. Automatically he moved away from her as Tsunade finally managed to pull herself together enough to growl. "What is going on?"

Shizune stuttered out the words 'Naru' and 'heart isn't working' which was three words more than either the Kage or Copy nin needed to hear before the exchanged a look and went tearing out of the room to see what was wrong with Naru just as Sakura came out of the room down the hall, crying, while a gurney was wheeled out of the room with Naru on it.

Both Kakashi and Tsunade came to a stop as they looked first at Sakura then at Naru.

Naru looked exactly as she normally did aside from the look of horror on her face and her unblinking stare. Although Kakashi found it a mite odd that her face and lips were tinged blue as one of the other nurses walked up and pulled the blanket covering her from feet to chin, up over her face like she was dead.

"Sakura what's going on here?" Tsunade demanded as Sakura sobbed out the whole story from beginning to end. She had been trying to listen to Naru's heart beat but it hadn't been there, then she had noticed that Naru seemed to be having trouble breathing, like she was in distress, then she had started to turn blue then they had lost her.

Naru was dead.


	29. Chapter 29

Sorry it took so long to get something posted. I'm writing on my broken comp, despite the fact that I shouldn't and the damn thing went totally black and unresponsive for a while.

So, here is the next chapter. And I will try to have the another one up soon.

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Naru's unease about her physical had quickly morphed into horror when she was pronounced dead and wheeled past Tsunade and Kakashi who both had such _desolate_ looks on their faces as Sakura sobbed out the details of her 'demise'.

Frankly she thought that they should know better. I mean they knew about the Kyubbi and some of it's abilities for gods sake, was it really that much of a stretch for her to simply be experiencing a-an internal _hiccup_ of sorts? Did they automatically have to assume the worst and make her nightmare even more real?

She heard the faint thud of someone hitting the floor- probably in a dead faint from shock or something. And heard Shizune shriek Tsunade's name. So it must have been her hitting the floor.

Naru blunk her eyes under the sheet and tried to focus.

Detecting no hint of sound from Kakashi at all though she could sense him walking next to the gurney and felt him slip a hand under the sheet, and grope around for a moment for one of her own.

She hesitated for a moment then subtly slipped her hand in his and willed herself to remain still as she heard him give a shuddering breath.

Things got silent for about ten minutes or so aside from the person pushing her telling Kakashi that he couldn't stay with her. To which the Copy nin would reply in a rough tone, "Watch me." Before falling totally silent again with the exception of the elevator dinging when it opened and closed twice.

Once when they boarded and again when they got off in the basement where the morgue was.

Once there Kakashi thanked the person who had wheeled her down there then none too nicely kicked said person out of the morgue and slammed the door shut, then after bracing the door shut with a metal chair walked back over to the gurney and pulled the covers back from her face and leaned down and hissed.

"_Breathe_ if you know what's good for you."

Naru took one look at Kakashi's masked face and wanted to breathe, but- He tugged his mask down while jerking off his headband and leaned over her again, this time framing her face with his hands and growling in a furious sounding tone. "Breathe!"

Naru mentally frowned at his tone. There was a wealth of worry, fear, anger and sorrow mixed together in it, she could see more in his eyes, his expression. He really was scared that she was gone wasn't he?

She took a small breath and blinked her eyes- it was just as well that this ended now. She had no wish to hurt anyone with this. She merely wanted to avoid more trouble and maybe get out of her physical. Kakashi made a strained sound and put his fingers against her throat to count her pulse, unsure of what exactly to make of what had just happened and nearly had his legs go out from under him when he felt _nothing_ under his finger tips.

No thudding. No pulsing. No reassuring vibration of her heart beating under her skin. There was just nothing. And it horrified him.

He dropped his hands from her and staggered back, his face going pale as she pushed herself upright and took several more breaths. "Y-You don't h-have a p-pulse." He said stuttered stupidly. He didn't know why he was bothering to say anything at all, to his knowledge dead things couldn't hear.

She looked at him and held up one finger and took a deeper breath, some of the color returning to her face before she said. "Don't need a pulse most of the time. Can't die one way or another." Kakashi gaped at her for a second as he recalled her earlier anxiousness over being examined and quickly put things together in his mind and made a relieved sound as he put a hand over hsi heart and mentally swore.

Gods in heaven this girl was going to be the death of him. He could almost swear by it.

And while he was relieved that she was alive (pulse or not) he was a upset with her for not warning him. No scratch that he was _pissed_ that she hadn't bothered to warn him. "Goddammit Naru! What the hell were you doing putting us through this-" He shouted angrily, he couldn't believe that the little chit would be so insensitive as to pull a stunt like this.

It was horrible! And sick and twisted and depraved. _How dare she!_ How dare she make him think that he had lost her for even a second. If not for the fact that he held his temper fairly well under stress, he would have wrapped his fingers around her throat and strangled her.

"Did you see what you did to Shizune and Sakura? They're both hysterical thinking that they've killed you and Tsunade was so devistated that she fainted!" He shouted, his voice getting louder and louder by the minute before he stopped with a snarled, "_Are you fucking proud of yourself?_ Are you proud of the fact that you nearly gave me a heart attack and cause phychological damage to Tsunade and the others-"

Naru visibly flinched and gave him a wide eyed stricken look. She hadn't meant too. She hadn't meant to hurt anyone, she'd just froze up and hadn't been able to pull herself together in time to prevent the damage that had been done.

Her eyes teared up and she blinked several times to keep from crying. She didn't want Kakashi to know how deeply his words had just hurt her as he banged his hands on the wall and pointed at her and growled warningly for her to stay put while he went and got Sakura and the others so that she could apologize for her sick joke and clear this mess up then kicked the chair holding the door closed out of the way and storming out.

Naru bit her bottom lip and wiped at her face when some tears finally slipped down her face. She couldn't believe that Kakashi thought that she had done this on purpose. It just seemed so...horrid. Especially after the amount of time they had been spending together.

God, didn't he know her better than that?

It was starting to look like he didn't. And it was that point right there that made her feel the most hurt and betrayed. She got up off of the gurney and made her way over to where the sink was and climbed up on it so that she could get to the window above it and slipped out.

She didn't want to see Kakashi for a while.


	30. Chapter 30

When Naru showed up at his hotel room outside of the village, crying, Jiriaya knew that something was seriously wrong.

Especially when she wouldn't meet his eyes. Jiriaya dropped everything pertaining to the mission that Tsunade had given him and quickly ushered Naru inside of his room and holed up there for three days trying to get Naru to tell him what happened when he got a message from Tsunade telling him of what had happened.

Jiriaya read the message three times, not really believing for a second that Naru had played a prank of that kind on anyone before going to Naru and sitting down on the edge of her bed and asking her, "What happened?"

Naru didn't respond at first and Jiriaya was starting to get worried when she finally said. "I don't think that I should go back there."

"Why?"

"Because I think they're pissed."

"And do they have any reason to be pissed? Did you really pull a sick prank on them?"

"No. My heart stopped and they thought that I was dying. I didn't know what to do. I just froze-" Jiriaya reached out and ran his fingers through her hair in an effort to comfort her. He didn't blame her for being upset. Hell, he couldn't even blame Kakashi and the others for being upset since they hadn't known that Naru couldn't control the fact that her heart stopped at random times during the day and night.

Naru should have said something to warn them yet at the same time she probably hadn't said anything for the same reasons that she never said anything about her physical condition. People just couldn't seem to handle hearing such things. They tended to look at her strangely, and react like she was a monster. Or worse an abomination.

In the past three years since her change, Jiriaya had made the mistake of having her examined thirty times just to make sure that he learned everything that he could about her insides _and_ outsides. And in that time she had been viciously attacked by a number of people trying to kill her because they didn't understand what she was.

Since then she tended to get wary of having physical's done and also tended to freeze up and panic when someone found her out. So yes in many ways, Naru's silence about her heart was understandable.

Still Tsunade and the others were upset at her because they had thought that she was actually dead. Then despite being relieved that she wasn't dead, they had become angry at her thinking that she had played such a childish prank on them. It was no wonder Naru felt that she couldn't go back.

She was trapped either way one looked at things.

She doubted the others would understand, and the others were too furious with her to both trying to understand. Time was what was needed here. Time and hopefully some explaining to Tsunade while keeping her and the others from tearing into Naru.

An idea occurred to him, that maybe he could get Naru away from the village and Tsunade, Sakura and Kakashi until things cooled down and before he even realized it he asked, "Hey, since you don't want to go back then how about you come with me on my mission? We'll summon ourselves into the village and see Tsunade real quick to get permission then we'll head out. You don't even have to be in the room if you don't want to be."

Naru was quiet as she nodded her head and Jiriaya gave her a grin, though she wasn't looking at him and couldn't see it and said in a mock cheery tone. "Okay then! Lets get you up, showered and ready to go!"

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Kakashi stood with Sakura in Tsunade's office, both of them listening carefully to the instructions she gave them about their mission. They didn't bother asking why she wasn't planning to give them a third member to work with or anything. They already knew the reason why.

Their mission was to find, retrieve and bring Naru back to face punishment for her prank. And while they weren't exactly pissed anymore, they weren't exactly happy with the girl either which meant that her punishment would be humiliating, and possibly even painful since it had been devised by all three of them.

But first they had to drag the girl back.

And to do that they had to first find out her location. Tsunade thought that she had slipped out of the village, and had put all of the nins on alert that if they saw Naru, they should grab her, tie her up and bring her straight to Tsunade. However the main drawback from thinking that she was out of the village was that there were far more places for her to hide out at.

Which was a pain really since it meant that their mission could take them anywhere from a few hours, days, weeks- To months. Possibly even _years_ depending on how frequently Naru moved from place to place and how informed their information networks kept them. "Alright you both know the drill. Go get Naru and bring her back."

"Hai." Said the two grim faced nins before they both vanished. They would find Naru. And when they did she'd be sorry for the crap she had pulled _and_ for leaving them behind again.

They both mental swore it.

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Fortyfive minutes later Jiriaya and Naru stood outside the hotel. Both were ready to go back to the village to ask for permission for Naru to go on another mission with Jiriaya until things blew over.

They both just hoped that Tsunade would listen to reason.


	31. Chapter 31

Kakashi lept from tree limb to tree limb going over the events of the other day along with how furious/beside himself the past three days and made a fist. Damn her for just up and disappearing like this! Did she have any idea how worried he'd been? How worried they'd all been?

Did she know that they might have forgiven her right away if all she had done was apologize for her prank? But no- she'd left. Just up and disappeared into thin _fucking_ air. No letter or note. She hadn't even taken any of the things that he'd gotten for her so that she could stay with him indefinately if she wished.

But what really, really pissed him off was the fact that he had been going out of his mind- Literally driving himself crazy because she wasn't right goddamn there where he wanted-er, _needed_ her to be. Honest to god, he'd trashed his apartment the other night in the hopes that she might be trying to hide from him there.

He'd ripped apart every room, shattered and smashed his furniture and knick knacks. He had even burned some of his clothes and shit because it carried her scent. And he couldn't fucking _concentrate_ with her scent clinging to everything! How was he supposed to track her through scent when everything smelled like her?

Jesus, he was frazzled.

And annoyed. Man, oh man he was annoyed. Hatake's didn't do well apart from their mates. Even if they were pissed at her for something stupid. His apartment and behavior these past few days were a testimant to that fact.

And underneath all of these upsetting and somewhat insane impulses, was his desire for Naru's company again.

He knew that he'd blown up at her. He hadn't meant too but when he had first though that she was dead he had stubbornly clung to the hope that she was alive. And if not then he had already resigned himself to living the rest of his days pining for her, miserable and alone.

Or he could have secretly harvested some of the eggs from her ovaries and run off somewhere to find a surrigant mother and raise their children in peace away from the village. Hell, he still might do that if he wound up strangling her for making him so crazy. And since she had said before that she couldn't die, then well, at least he wouldn't be alone once the urge to strangle her, passed.

"Where do you think she went?" Sakura asked curiously as she caught up to him. She'd been observing him for the past few days and had noticed that her former sensei seemed to be manic about something that she couldn't quite put her finger on, but she knew that it must have something to do with Naru since his behavior suggested as much.

He looked at her with both eyes and she felt herself shiver at the look in his eyes. She'd only seen her sensei look like this several times before when she was younger. Once was when team seven encountered Zabuza and Naru had just freed Kakashi from the water prison and was floating in the water, helpless. Kakashi had risen up with a look that positively screamed '_retrubution_' before he'd wounded Zabuza to the point where the man's accomplice had had to fake his death.

But this look- this look was something else entirely. Eerily similar to retrubution, yet not that exact look. It was more like the look of a wolf on the hunt for a fat little rabbit to prey on. Although something told her this particular wolf had no interest in rabbits. He wanted to sink his fangs into something more substantial.

Like a kitsune. Team seven's kitsune to be exact.

_Good lord Naru if you've got a brain in your head you'll stay away until Kakashi calms down. I don't want to lose you for real this time... _Sakura thought nervously.

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Tsunade was in the middle of reading a report when Jiriaya appeared in a puff of smoke with Naru standing next to him. The woman made a frustrated sound as her golden brown eyes zeroed in on the source of her ire as Jiriaya handed something to the girl then promptly pushed her towards the office door.

Tsunade started to get up and go after the girl, wanting to reprimand her for her poor taste in practical jokes but Jiriaya stopped her by moving quickly enough to block her way and push her back down into her chair. "Jiriaya..." She said the man's name warningly as she smacked his hands away from her.

"Shut up and listen Tsunade. Naru wasn't trying to play a prank or hurt anyone. What happened at the hospital the other day is something that she has no control over-"

"It's one of the things that Kyubbi gave her right? The ability to live even if her heart isn't beating-" Tsunade asked suddenly. Jiriaya looked a little bit surprised and started to ask her how she had pieced even that much together when the woman kicked him in the shin and hissed as he jumped back and yelped. "She more or less said as much when she told Kakashi that she didn't need a pulse."

Jiriaya rubbed his sore shin and grunted. "And you're still pissed at her?" He sounded surprised. Like really, really surprised.

"I'm not so much as pissed at her as I am irritated that she hasn't shown up to explain her side of things to me yet. Besides, it's Kakashi that you need to be worrying about. Since the incident the other day he's been losing it in a big way. Why just a day ago he started a huge ass bon fire in the middle of the living room. Nearly burned down the whole damned building. And on top of that his place looks like a hurricane has hit it...six or seven times."

Jiriaya frowned at Tsunade's warning. He'd known Kakashi since his pop had died and had never, _ever_ heard of him behaving so out of control before. I wonder what's causing him to act so strangely? He wondered before shaking his head and pulling out a small leather bound book and a thick yellow file with Naru's name on it and put them both down on Tsunade's desk.

"These contain notes and medical findings about Naru. It explains why her heart stops, how her chakra works now and other things that you may find intresting. The book here-" He tapped the top cover with his index finger. "Has diary notes about her and her re training and some rather..._traumatizing_ experiences she had inbetween. This book will explain _why_ she didn't say anything to warn any of you about her heart and other things."

"Alright, I'll look at them and hand them over to Kakashi and Sakura once they've returned. Now, is there anything else your here for?"

"I want to take Naru out of the village for the mission you sent me on a few days ago-"

"You mean that you haven't completed it yet?"

"No... I got a little bit distracted by Naru showing up on my hotel door step crying her heart out." Jiriaya growled and caught Tsunade winch a little bit in sympathy before sighing and nodding her head.

"Alright. Take her with you. But make sure to bring her back in a week other wise Kakashi might go homicidal and kill everything walking through the village streets."

"Done. Just sedate the brat if he gets out of hand." Jiriaya said before leaning down and giving Tsunade a quick kiss on the cheek before straightening his spine and turning on his heel and walking out of the office. Leaving Tsunade smirking at her desk.

She was sure that she wouldn't have to sedate Kaskashi since he was already off on the hunt. She had no doubt that the man would track Naru down even if he had to track her to the ends of the earth. Hatake's were notoriously relentless when they were after their mates, after all.


	32. Chapter 32

Sorry this took so long, I got a job as of yesterday and will be spending all of my days at my parents house watching my grandma until she dies.

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Kakashi didn't find Naru with in the first two or three days and several things happened in that time. One) Sakura had decided to go at her own pace and had gone back to the village to try looking there and had half assed talked Kakashi into going back and checking with Tsunade _one_ more time before he struck out on his own again.

After Two) Finding out that Naru had come back just long enough to get permission to leave for a week long mission. At which time- Three) Tsunade had given him a small leather bound book and ordered him to read it before he found Naru.

So here he was on day four of his hunt and he had managed to finally catch up to Naru and Jiriaya in a small town where Jiriaya seemed to be gathering information on the Akutsuki and their movements.

However instead of going to get Naru like his instincts were _screaming_ at him too, he sat himself down to thumb through some of the pages of the small book that Tsunade had given him in the hopes of understanding why she had been compelled to give him the book and tell him to read it.

And after an hour or so he was starting to understand the why of things. Including why Naru had run. He sighed and let his head fall back against the trunk of the tree he was leaning against and closed his eyes as a feeling of gut wrenching shame washed over him.

God he was an idiot. A real world class A-grade son of a bitch.

_Why didn't I at least give her a chance to explain herself before blowing up at her?_ He wondered as he lifted a hand and ran it through his wild silver hair. If he had known that Naru couldn't control some of her body's functions anymore then he probably wouldn't have thought that she was playing a prank on them, and gotten pissed. He should have known to ask first, but he hadn't and now Naru had placed herself in temporary exile because she wasn't sure if he and the others would welcome her back.

_I'll just have to make up with her and let her know that she'll always be welcome with me._ Kakashi thought as he lifted his head and snapped the book shut and stuffed it back into his weapon's pouch. And slipped off of the tree limb that he had been resting on and let himself fall down to the ground below where he landed on the balls of his feet and slowly stood up and started walking.

He needed to catch up to Naru and tell her that he was sorry. He just hoped that once he did, she would forgive him.

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Naru was sitting in the hotel lobby with a modest meal and some sake in front of her, trying to kill time until Jiriaya came back while observing the various people around her.

So far the most facinating people she'd seen had been the two step siblings who had also been lovers.

She'd seen them fooling around out of the corner of her eye a little while ago and hadn't been able to stop herself from looking towards their table as the sister had given her brother a blow job before more or less mounting her brother right there in plain sight. To say that this was shocking to Naru would be an understatment.

She hadn't known what the proper reaction to such a spectical was so she had looked around at some of the other people in the room, noting that they weren't really paying any attention to the pair then had started watching them out of curiosity. Her confused and befuddled mind taking this as a chance to study human coupling without anyone embarrassing her by giving her any pointed or funny looks.

Eventually watching the two go at it like animals started to make her feel even more uncomfortable. So she stopped watching and concentrated more on her food and managing to choke it down while she mentally went over the small conversation she and her master had had last night before bed.

_"Something is going on with Kakashi-"_ Jiriaya had said suddenly out of the blue. Curious about what he meant, Naru had given him her undevided attention. Stopping the chakra manipulation exercise that she had been doing absently to distract herself from thinking too much.

Jiriaya had been on his third bottle of sake at the time and was probably partially drunk, still he seemed lucid enough to be able to tell her what he meant before she decided to dismiss his words. He had set his cup down and took a deep ragged breath, the past few days he'd come up with nothing on the Akutsuki. And Naru knew that the waiting was starting to get to him.

_"Tsunade said that he hasn't been acting like himself. Said that he partially destroyed his apartment the other day and nearly burned down the whole damn building."_

Naru cocked her head and frowned a little bit. _"Was he cooking?"_ She asked. Jiriaya shook his head no and Naru hummed. Well that was a mite alarming. Especially if he did it on purpose.

Jiriaya poured himself another cup of sake and lifted the cup to his lips and said, _"If we don't hear anything about the Akutsuki by noon tomorrow I'm going to hit the local record keepers and see if I can get any information on the Hatake clan's bloodline limits." _

_Bloodline limits? _Naru thought in surprise.

She hadn't been aware that Kakashi had a bloodline limit. Sure she had heard rumors, who in the leaf village hadn't? But no one had ever seen proof of his bloodline limit and had merely started to assume that it had skipped Kakashi or merely died out with the rest of his clan. So hearing news that Kakashi's long supposedly lost bloodline limit may have finally surfaced was _facinating_ to her to say the least.

It would certainly explain certain behaviors in the Copy nin if he did have one. Like why he was so particular about scents. Why he wore a mask. The fact that his canine teeth were unusually sharp like her own without having to be filed to sharp points. It would also explain why he was so cunning and ruthless.

She stopped eating and pushed her plate away as something occurred to her. He had been behaving strangely when she had been staying with him as well. Like when he had smelled Shikamaru's scent and had sniffed her neck to check and make sure that his scent wasn't mixed with her own.

She knew it was a territorial impulse that had fuled him that time, but there had been other things since then. What if his destroying his apartment had something to do with her leaving? And if it did, then did she need to worry about what he might do if his peculiar behavior escalated? Would he be a danger to himself? Would he become a danger to someone else?

Her stomach felt like it was in knots by the time she paid for her food and ran out the hotel door to look for her master. She needed to know exactly what sort of bloodline limit Kakashi had and how dangerous it was. And she needed to know _now_.


	33. Chapter 33

Jiriaya stared at the papers in his hands with a scowl on his face. He'd found the records of the Hatake clan dating all the way back to before the clan had settled in the leaf village. The papers went back about two hundred and fifty years and told in some detail about the clan and their many, many, _many_ talents.

Before becoming a shinobi clan the Hatake's had lived like gypsies. Roaming from one place to another, never really settling down.

There was a record on them that dated back to a hundred years before their settlement in the Leaf village that stated that there had been a mountain clan of nearly feral people who had dressed themselves in wolf furs and animal skins and had hunted wayward travelers. Ambushing them and stealing their weapons, clothing, gold and silver.

And sometimes even their women and children.

There was a record that told of how they had been discovered in their remote mountain home after kidnapping a diyamo's daughter and wife and married them to two of their clans men and refused to give them up causing them to be attacked by a group of hired samerai and were nearly wiped out before scattering what was left of their clan to the four corners of the world to preserve what was left of the bloodline.

After that they were recorded to have restarted their lives as shinobi. They were said to be highly intelligent, modivated, and very,_ very_ gifted at tracking, hunting, laying traps, ambushes, attacking and defending- _Christ_ the list went on and on.

It was believed that the Hatake's had _more_ than one bloodline trait. For instance it was documented that one man could appear to shape shift himself into a large black wolf, panther or bear while another was extraordinarily gifted in another way and could go on to become a figure head within the clan.

Some of the men were cunning where as the ruthlessness noted in Kakashi seemed to be an inherited trait from the females the Hatake's married and mated.

It was also believed that most of the bloodline traits had died out while some people theorized that those traits were somehow transfered to others with similar abilities upon the death of one. For example if an elder was on his deathbed and one of his more gifted children was close by, he could transfer his abilities to that child and make them stronger than they already were.

However because the gift transfered wasn't one that the person recieved at birth then it was thought to lay dormant for many, many years. Often times only showing when a Hatake had met their mate and triggered certain instincts in them.

Jiriaya wasn't exactly sure if this had anything to do with Kakashi's recent behavior but he supposed that it wouldn't hurt to pass the information on just in case. He'd show the papers to Naru as soon as he got back to the hotel.

He pocketed the papers and returned the files and antique books that he'd been looking through back to the shelf he'd pulled them from and then left. It was about one thirty in the afternoon by the time he left. And the bright sunshine filtering through the fluffy white clouds overhead, was bright enough to temporarily blind him the second he stepped outside.

Blinking to help his eyes adjust to the light he missed seeing a certain silver haired nin slip by him while giving him a narrow eyed calculating look before taking off running through the streets, disappearing into the crowd.

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Finding Jiriaya's whereabouts had been easier than Kakashi had expected of the Sanin. Yet Naru hadn't been with him so while he was happy about knowing where the man was (and knowing that he'd be out of the way for what Kakashi had planned for Naru) he was certain that he had very little time to track down Naru and make up with her for his blunder.

He wandered through the crowd for what must have been an hour, trying to track her by scent alone when he finally saw her up ahead of him twenty or thirty feet. He recognised her because she wasn't wearing her hood for once and he could plainly see the curve of her jaw, and the vermilion of her eyes through her reddish/pink blond hair as she walked.

She seemed to be looking for something among the sea of faces surrounding her and for a brief moment Kakashi wondered if she was looking for him in the same way that he'd been looking for her.

He ducked into an small opening between two buildings to observe her for a moment or so and saw her half turn around and look in his direction and held his breath, waiting for her to spot him. Her eyes locked on his hiding place and he saw a faint frown marring her features as she turned and walked back towards him and paused just outside of his reach. "Kakashi, is that you?"

His heart thudded in his chest and he suddenly found himself unable to breathe or think or speak. Oh god, he had it bad didn't he? He wondered as she reached out one hand towards him like she wanted to touch him. Elated that she was still willing to reach out to him despite what had happened, he lifted one hand and started to reach for her when she suddenly pulled her arm back and gave him an suspicious look and asked. "Are you still mad at me?"

He stared at her hard for a second. He wasn't mad at her for the incident at the hospital. Not anymore now that he knew that she couldn't control that particular function. He was however still furious with her for leaving him without any warning.

"I'm furious with you..." He growled at her in a rough rumbling voice. Naru looked uncomfortable for a second and he sighed and reached out, this time with both hands and framed her face with them and moved in as close as their bodies would allow and touched his forehead to hers and said softly. "But not for the hospital incident. Not anymore."

"You yelled at me."

"Of course I yelled Naru, I had just been told that you were dead and then you just sit up and look at me with a panicked expression on your face. What was I supposed to think?"

"That something other than a prank had happened." Naru said in a whispered tone. Kakashi made a strange sound in the back of his throat. Not quite a growl or a groan, more like a combination of the two as he removed one hand from her face long enough to pull his mask down under his bottom lip and then brushed his lips across her own in a feather light caress.

Trying to convince her without words how _sorry_ he was for jumping on her like he had. "I didn't mean to hurt you Naru. But you scared me out of my wits." He finally said as he dropped his hands from her cheeks to her shoulders as he nuzzled the underside of her jaw with his nose.

Oh god, he'd missed her. He'd missed being so close to her. Had missed kissing and touching- Naru araped her arms around his waist and shuffled just a mite closer and buried her face against his chest as he wrapped his arms around her.

All the turmoil and confusion from the past few days left him, making him feel more like himself again. He could feel Naru's heart beating under his fingertips and sub consciously slowed his heart to match her own as he held her.

"You never said if you've forgiven me for going off on you." He said after several minutes.

"I forgive you Kashi... Just ask questions from now on before you go off on me." Kakashi chuckled softly and rested his chin on top of her head for a moment before pulling back and asking.

"Would you mind if we go somewhere?" Naru gave him another suspicious look, seeming to sense something was still up with him, but nodded her head and grabbed his wrist and led him out of his hiding place and pulled him along behind her all the way back to the hotel.


	34. Chapter 34

Yo, sorry for the late update. My hours are still sort of getting away from me.

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When Naru had grabbed his wrist and started to lead him through the town, Kakashi had had a little bit of difficulty thinking about anything but the feel of her fingers around his wrist. And when she let her grip slip from his wrist to his hand, he was unable to supress the stirrings of lust he felt pulsing through him as a funny, besotted little grin curved his lips as he followed close behind Naru.

He lost track of time. Lost track of the fact that there were people around him, any of whom could had been an enemy. Nothing mattered to him right then aside from the fact that Naru was holding his hand. Like she were his lover.

_As it should be-_ His mind whispered possessively. _She is the one that you've decided on after all. It is only natrual that she would feel some measure of emotion similar to your own and seek physical contact though she isn't the same as you. As your mate; even an unclaimed one, she would still feel uncomfortable without your presence. _

Is that really so? Kakashi wondered to himself as Naru pulled him off of the street and into a building. A hotel no doubt. Which didn't help his sanity any when all of the blood in his head instantly rushed south at the thought of being alone with her in a hotel.

Because hotels had beds and his mind was suddenly consumed with images of himself and Naru, both tangled up in satin sheets. Sweating, panting, kissing and- He made a strange sound and lifted a hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose as if he had a headache and felt a little bit of blood trickle out of his left nostril.

Oh dear god, what was wrong with him?

Naru was taking him to her room to talk. Not mate like bunnies during spring. Or at least he was sure that she wasn't. She was a mite difficult to read from the back, although...

He glanced down at the curve of her bottom encased in short cut off shorts that hugged her tight little ass, and then lower. Letting his eyes drift along the length of her long slender legs and grinned again. He was really digging the view. It did nothing for his state of mind, but what the hell. If his heart exploded in his chest before they reached her room then he could at least die happy.

He shook his head and wiped at his nose with the back of one gloved hand and dropped it while again wondered what was wrong with him. He wasn't normally so- so perverted. At least he didn't think he was.

Sure he read porn books in public but that was a great deal different from actually leering at someone while their back was turned. He used the Itcha-Itcha books as a cover to observe people and their behavior, for the most part, when he wasn't reading. But he never reacted like a horny teenager with a girl before.

Well, not since he had grown out of _being_ a horny teenager anyways. Yet that was the exact feeling he had right now. Like he was a horny teenager. Like he just couldn't wait to sink himself inside of her softness and make her cry his name and writhe in ecstacy.

Naru let go of his hand and started to dig around in her shorts pocket for her room key, and Kakashi barely even noticed the fact that she wasn't holding his hand anymore until she managed to unlock and open the door and stepped inside and started to strip off her jacket.

He stood there just outside the door looking around with a slightly dazed look on his face before his mind kicked into overdrive and he began to focus on random things here and there inside of the room.

The bed- there was only one. Something that confused him at first until it occurred to him that Jiriaya didn't sleep in here, though he could smell the man's scent strongly in the room.

There was a table moved out of the way- where Naru ate her meals. Some green, red and cream colored carpeting covering the floor. Some clothes were piled in the floor in one corner of the room, next to where Naru had tossed down her jacket and then there was Naru herself.

Standing just a foot or so from the bed, looking at him over one of her shoulders. A strange expression on her lovely face. "Are you coming in?" She asked in a tentative tone. He looked at her, his mind racing though none of his thoughts were completely coherent as he nodded his head and stepped inside and used one of his feet to kick the door closed behind him.

The door clicked closed and for a split second it felt as if time had stopped.

Naru had her back to him, her entire focus seeming to be on something else as everything hit him all at once. 1) He was alone with Naru in a hotel room. 2) He was very, _very_ aroused and quite possibly going insane. He wouldn't quibble on the details. 3) He felt so hot and tense that he just knew something was going to cause him to snap.

And something did.

He wasn't sure what it was exactly. It might have been one thing or a combination of everything. All he was truly aware of was that one moment he was standing just inside the door way and the next he was across the room, his arms closing around Naru, lifting her up off fo her feet- Startling her if the strangled sounding shriek that escaped her throat was any indication at all.

Then he tossed her down onto the bed and before she could so much as settle or demand to know what he was doing, he was on her. His fingers laced together with her own while pinning her hands to the bed, his mouth covering hers, hot and hard and so damn _hungry_.

God if he had thought even for a moment that she would let him, he would have stripped her shorts and panties from her delectable little body and eaten her until they were both too sated to even care about what may or may not happen next.

But as it was he was content to ravish the sweetness of her mouth, sucking the air from her lungs, making her toes curl as he tightly gripped her hands in his. Naru made a sound, a low moan and Kakashi lifted his lips from hers automatically sensing that she needed air.

He drew back just enough to look at her, taking in the sight of her swollen and bruised lips, her flushed cheeks, the bewildered/confused look on her face as she licked her lips and let her eyes drift closed for a second as she shuddered. "W-What a-are you d-doing?" She asked in a rough tone that he'd never heard before.

His reaction to the tone of her voice was a rumbling purr that vibrated in the center of his chest as he leaned his head down and skimmed his lips along the corner of her lips, across her cheek to the curve of her jaw and asked in a breathy tone. "What does it feel like I'm doing?"

Naru frowned as he pulled back to look at her again and tried to think. She had no idea _what_ he was doing. He wasn't acting like his normal wolfish self. Or maybe he was. She looked at him, her vermilion eyes studying him. He didn't even really look like his usual self. His mismatched eyes were different. The colors of his eyes were even different. One was an eeriy forest green while his Sharigan was a lighter color of red. His hair seemed an inch or so longer and a little bit shaggier.

Could he be in the thrall of one of his bloodline traits? Naru wondered as he shifted so that his body was resting a little more heavily over hers sending a shiver of awareness licking down her spine as she felt the thick bulge in his pants against her stomach.

_Oh god-_ He felt so overwhelmingly big. So warm. So-So..._virile _and utterly male that her head felt like it was spinning, her breath was coming out in short ragged bursts, her heart was beating far too fast and she felt overly hot. _This isn't like me-_ Her muddled mind thought as Kakashi kissed her again as the reason why she felt so strangely crashed through her mind suddenly.

This was a mating heat, wasn't it? It was the only thing that she could think of that would explain Kakashi's behavior as well as her own. He wanted to mate with her and she was automatically, instinctively submitting to him.

But she would only react in such a way with her true lifemate. Did this mean that Kakashi was-


	35. Chapter 35

Sorry that this chapter is so damn late but- I'm _very_ tired.

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Her lifemate? Was Kakashi her lifemate? She wondered in a daze as his mouth closed over one of her nipples while one hand kneaded her breast and the other worked between her legs. She gasped and gripped his taunt shoulders, her sharp little nails digging into him through his shirt as she tried to think.

Which was a mite difficult when she was on the verge of cumming from the potent combination of sensations washing over her. Yet she _tried_ anyways.

If Kakashi was her lifemate then it only stood to reason that she would react to him in such a wanton way since she was wired to react to her mate in an intensely sexual way. Her mate needed and she could do nothing but obey and see to his needs because they fed her own.

And Kakashi _needed_- Oh dear lord he needed. His hunger for her bordered on violent and unnatrual. And she could feel his irrational hunger as if it were her own. It drove all sane thought from her mind, making her hotter, wetter. Her body ached in ways she hadn't known were possible. Making it difficult to breathe.

She should be trying to escape him, shouldn't she? Maybe put a little bit of distance between them to help him-er them both regain some of their senses? He scraped his teeth across her nipple before biting down on the sensitive nub causing her to cry out as she arched her back up off of the bed a little bit as all thought left her mind.

To hell with escape. What he was doing to her felt far too pleasant to even entertain the notion of escape. Besides she knew that she wouldn't get far anyways before he had her pinned under him again.

His bloodline limit would drive him to do so, it was far too strong for him to ignore it at this point. His need was so strong that it consumed rationality, sanity- It pulsed and pounded through his skull, laced his blood; making him abnormally strong and so utterly dangerous.

She should have been scared. God knew that she wanted to be. After all she wasn't supposed to mate for another month and two in a half weeks. If she gave in now she had no way of knowing what would happen.

She slipped her hands between their bodies with the intention of trying to push him away when he pushed two fingers inside of her. She gave a startled scream and clenched around his fingers as her world faded to black for a second or so.

_Oh god-_ Had she just cum? She wondered as her vision slowly returned to normal as Kakashi lifted himself up off of her and withdrew his fingers from inside of her and moved to sit back on his heels for a moment and watched her with a predatory look on his handsome face as he lifted his hand to his lips and licked the fingers that he'd used to bring her over as he planned out his next move.

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Jiriaya had just returned to the hotel to share his findings with Naru. But first he stopped off by his room to grab a sealing scroll with the intention of inventing a suppression seal for Kakashi's specific bloodline limit/limits and then made his way to Naru's room. However instead of simply walking in like he usually did he found himself rooted to the floor just outside the door.

His ears picking up some very _peculiar_ sounds coming from within.

Now Jiriaya knew that Naru was a healthy young- er demon. And he also knew that she was in no way sexually active. So why was he hearing sounds of...well, sex coming from her room?

He heard her cry out and for a brief instant worried that maybe someone was hurting her. But quickly shook that thought off when it occurred to him that she would never allow someone close enough to do something of this sort to her unless-

Unless she knew and trusted them. Which meant that someone she knew and trusted was in the room with her. Could it be Kakashi? He wondered as he reached out and grasped the door knob in his hand and took a deep breath as he steeled himself against what he might see and silently opened the door and froze in place and _gaped_ at what he saw.

Naru lay on her back on the bed, her hands gripping the bed sheets so tightly that her knuckles were white. Her shirt was pulled up over her naked breasts and her entire lower body was bare aside from the large hands gripping her hips as Kakashi (or at least he sort of hoped that that was Kakashi) ate her pussy.

Naru looked towards the door, her face flushed and tear streaked, her expression almost pleading. _Shit!_ He needed to get her away from Kakashi.

He started to move into the room as stealthily as he could, meaning to sneak up on the copy nin and knock him out or something when Kakashi suddenly lifted his head, his face more or less hidden behind his silver hair, yet Jiriaya could distinctly see the man's tongue as he ran it along his lower lip. Licking away Naru's juices as he tipped his head back a little bit and subtly sniffed the air.

Jiriaya froze, his mind automatically flying into panic mode. And for good reason. He'd seen what Sakumo Hatake had done to men trying to seperate him from his wife. He could only imagine what Kakashi would do when he hadn't claimed Naru yet. _If_ he hadn't claimed her yet, that is.

He imagined that whatever was done to him would be particularly painful. Possibly even fatal.

The copy nin lowered Naru's hips, shrugging her long slender legs from his shoulders as he lowered his head slightly to kiss her abdomen before letting her hips go and then reached out with one hand and jerked her shirt down so that it was covering her breasts, hiding them from view as he shifted himself slightly and partially hiding Naru from Jiriaya as he growled.

_"What do you want?"_


	36. Chapter 36

_"What do you want?" _Kakashi growled at the Sage nin, mentally seething over the fact that he'd been interrupted when he felt that Naru was just a hairsbreath from submitting herself to him completely.

Jiriaya gave him a wary look and gulped, his dark eyes flickering from Kakashi to Naru for the briefest of seconds. Which was a huge mistake since the copy nin was feeling rather unstable at the moment and anything in the slightest could make him feel provoked. Causing him to resort to violence without thought or care.

"I want Naru, Kakashi-" Jiriaya said in a tone that belied his sudden urge to flee the room in terror. "Will you let her up so that she can come over to me?"

Kakashi stared at him with his mismatched eyes, an unreadable look on his face as he said in a low rumbling tone. "No."

"But your _scaring_ her Kakashi. She's worried and you aren't yourself. What would you do if you hurt her?" Jiriaya asked, trying to appeal to Kakashi's rational mind. Kakashi gave him an dark look, his mind seething with rage as he shifted closer to the edge of the bed. _How dare he-_ How dare this old one imply that he would hurt Naru under _any_ circumstances!

If he was really scaring his mate, he'd know it. He'd be able to smell on her skin and taste it in her sweetness. Not only that but if she wanted him to let her go, he'd do it. He would let her go. He may consider letting her go at this point a mite _inhumane_ and _torturous_, but he'd do it just the same.

Kakashi looked at Naru, his expression softening as he gazed at her. "Am I scaring you?"

There was no hesitation in her reply. "A little bit. But not in a bad way."

Kakashi nodded his head in understanding and reached out to smooth some of her hair back from her face as he mentally went over her response to his question. It was normal for one so innocent to feel a mite scared when put in a situtation like this one.

It was due mostly to feeling out of control, and nervous.

Any actual fear she may be feeling could come from the fact that she didn't know much of anything about sex since the council had forbidden her from being taught even the basics of sexual education like the other kids of her generation.

Such a thing could easily be taken care of. So he wasn't worried about it. And he would remain unworried about it unless she freaked out on him. Then and only then, he'd do something about it. "See Jiriaya, she isn't as scared as you may think. My Naru is a strong and courageous woman." Kakashi said proudly as he turned his eyes back to the Sanin, his features darkening again.

"You still need to let her go Kakashi."

"I told you no before, my mind has not changed."

"Kakashi, she doesn't understand what you want from her. Her mind is-"

Kakashi lifted one hand and Jiriaya automatically fell silent as the copy nin slowly got up off of the bed. His expression furious. "Naru's mind functions just like yours and mine and she knows exactly what is going on between us. Granted I know that she's curious to see how far things will go. I'll even admit to being curious in the same way. But she isn't a child. Thinking of her as one is a mistake that only a fool would make. Are you a fool perhaps?"

Jiriaya made an impatient sound and glared at the younger man.

Dammit, there was no reasoning with the damn man! The Sage could talk to the man until he was blue in the face but Kakashi wouldn't listen to a frigging word he said unless Naru spoke up and said something. "No, Kakashi. I'm not a fool."

"Then you should leave. _Now_. Before I lose my temper." Kakashi said. He felt he was being generous by giving the elder the chance to walk out of the room under his own power instead of dragging himself out after Kakashi broke some of his bones. Jiriaya however didn't feel the same.

He threw Kakashi's words back at him. "No, _you_ should leave. Now. Before I lose my temper and hurt you." Kakashi sighed. He didn't know why he bothered being civil when no one was listening to him anyways. Jiriaya didn't want to take his offer and leave, fine, he'd just force him to leave. He curled his lips back from his teeth, displaying his lengthening canines.

Jiriaya looked at him wide eyed, an alarmed look on his face as Naru finally seemed to regain her ability to move and rolled off fo the bed so that she could grab, and pull on her panties and shorts while the two men faced off.

Kakashi stood in the middle of the room with his arms crossed over his chest, his mismatched eyes taking on a feral glint that Jiriaya had never seen before and he was just waiting for the older man to make a move.

"Naru, once you've got your clothes fixed I want you to get across the room away from Kakashi. He isn't himself and he could hurt you if I let this nonsense continue." Jiriaya said as he tried to think up a supression seal that might work on Kakashi.

Naru zipped and buttoned her shorts into place and grabbed her hoody and slipped it on as she looked from one man to another before sighing. God in heaven the two were going to kill eachother unless something was done. So at the exact moment Jiriaya lifted his hands to make his seals- Kakashi surged forward and Naru rolled her eyes, then reached out and grabbed Kakashi by the scruff of the neck and vanished in a puff of smoke.

Her boys needed a damn time out.


	37. Chapter 37

Sorry about changing this chapter around so much. I'm trying to keep Kakashi in character.

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Kakashi staggered forward and almost rammed himself face first into a tree trunk before realizing that he wasn't in the hotel room anymore. He turned his head and looked around, suddenly gripped with panic. Where was Naru? Was she still back at the hotel?

A hooded figure stepped out from behind a tree several feet away and he sighed in relief and started towards her when he heard Naru rasp. "Stay there and keep your hands to yourself." Kakashi stopped in mid step and automatically put his hands behind his back and just stood there staring at her as she slipped her hood off and sighed tiredly.

He started to step closer, to touch her. But Naru seemed to know what he was thinking and gave him a look that practically screamed, _Stay back or I'll punch you someplace really painful. _Kakashi made an irritated sound in the back of his throat.

"What's wrong?" He asked with a combination of worry and impatience. His body's demands still overshadowing much of his rational mind. Naru lifted her head and looked at him for a second and snorted before saying.

"Nothing and everything-" Kakashi frowned. Just what the hell was that supposed to mean anyways? How can nothing, yet everything be wrong? He wondered as he opened his mouth to ask why she wanted him to stay put when Naru cut him off. "_That_ is a hell of a bloodline limit you have there, wolfy. When exactly were you going to regain your senses? Before or after you killed some innocent person? After you killed Jiriaya perhaps?"

"My senses? Bloodline limit? What bloodline limit?" Kakashi asked, another frown marring his features as he tried to think. He didn't have a bloodline limit. His only bloodline traits were the white chakra, silver hair, small sharp little fang like canines and a slightly higher than normal aptitude for hunting, tracking and killing.

So why had Naru mentioned a bloodline limit? And why did she think he had one?

He frowned again, his features twisting into a dark scowl. Why was he thinking at all? His thought process was still off and his body was aching in a way that made him think that his balls were about to explode. Shouldn't he be focusing on that instead?

Naru snapped her fingers in front of his face and he automatically grabbed her wrist as he looked down at her, a wolfish grin curving his lips. Ah this was better. Nothing felt better than direct contact between mates. Kakashi thought as he pulled Naru closer, intending to pick up where they had left off when Jiriaya had showed up but Naru planted her feet firmly on the ground and refused to let him.

She merely shook her head no and jabbed him in the chest with her finger tip. "No Kakashi. We aren't picking up where we left off. I need to know more about that bloodline limit of yours."

"I told you, I don't have one." Kakashi said as he pulled her hand from his chest and lifted it to his mouth.

Naru made a soft hissing sound and scratched the back of his hand, startling him out of his lust just enough to realize that she wasn't playing with him right now. She really did want to talk about this bloodline limit he did or did not have. He sighed and let her go and forced his body somewhat under control again and waited as Naru gave him an apologetic look (no doubt for scratching his hand) then asked.

"Are you so sure?"

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Jiriaya had been tearing the town apart looking for Naru and Kakashi, his mind a whirl with questions. Why had Naru intervened? Did she really want Kakashi as he was now? Did she know something that he didn't about the Hatake's bloodline limit?

What was going on? Why had Kakashi sought Naru out? There must be a reason for his actions right? It couldn't all be the bloodline limit. There had to be more to it than that.

_If this is why the council conned Tsunade into retiring Kakashi so that he could marry and rebuild his clan, then I can definately see the pro's of such a bloodline's continuation._ The Sage thought as he leapt from roof to roof, his eyes anxiously scanning the crowd below for any signs of Naru and the Copy nin.

Kakashi, as wreckless as he was in his current state wasn't someone that just anyone could trifle with. From what Jiriaya had seen so far, he realized that if Naru hadn't have grabbed Kakashi and stopped him, then he would likely be laying on the floor of the hotel room. Broken and bleeding.

Kakashi hadn't seemed to be able to recognize him as his friend. All he'd seen was an interloper after his female. Of course he would react the way he had. Hatake's were _ruthless, relentless_ and _bloodthirsty_ killers when it came to the protection of their chosen mates.

But Naru wasn't his. Not yet.

Hopefully he could find them and place a suppression seal on the Hatake before he did anything more to Naru.


	38. Chapter 38

Naru backed away from Kakashi with a freaked out look on her pretty face as he stepped forward, tracking her movements like he had been doing for the past ten minutes or so after she had smacked him in the side of the head for trying to restart that funny buisness from before. And while the fact that she had smacked him in the side of the head had sort of stunned him for a moment, he had quickly shrugged it off, apparently thinking that she was playing with him and started trying to get in close again.

It was vexing to say the least since she couldn't seem to snap him out of his lust long enough to actually talk to him about his bloodline limit and get information. Kakashi seemed under the impression that he didn't _have_ a bloodline limit.

Naru _knew_ he was wrong, she could feel it in the subtle, nearly demonic chakra that pulsed through his body. Partially altering it. It was _very_ worrying to her to say the least. She didn't want him to do anything potentially harmful to himself or others.

Still making him realize that he had a bloodline limit was quickly becoming a pain.

Everytime she started to try and converse with him, the second he got with in touching distance he tried to grab her. Leading her to hiss and stomp on his foot or to punch him in the stomach, not hard enough to hurt him mind you. She wasn't that stupid.

But hard enough to shock him back to his senses for a moment or so.

Still, it was looking more and more like the demands of his body appeared to be over shadowing all rationality and common sense. Or at least that's what it looked like from her point of view. She took another step back, noting absently that they were surrounded by trees on all sides and frowned.

She knew that she had picked this place for it's seclusion but she was starting to feel more and more like Kakashi was herding her somewhere. She needed to maneuver him to an area where she could point out the changes in him and let him see them with his own eyes before the blasted man pounced on her.

She took another step back away from the addle witted copy nin and nearly tripped over a log, causing Kakashi to get this peculiar look on his face that he seemed to get when he was about to try grabbing her again. She put up a hand to ward him off but it didn't do anything but give him something to grab which is why she had to react quickly and grab his vest with her other hand. And spun around and _threw_ him as hard as she could in the direction clearest of trees and was a little bit startled when she heard a splash.

_Oh- Oh my._ She hadn't expected that. But then she'd lost track of her surroundings a while ago so it only stood to reason that she had forgotten that they were close to the lake. Kakashi's silver head popped up out of the water after a second or so and he gave her a slitted eye look to let her know just how unpleased he was with his abrupt cold shower as he slowly waded out of the cold water.

His mismatched eyes never wavering from her as he made his way out of the water and plopped down onto the ground in an irritated manner and growled. "That was uncalled for." Naru's lips twitched despite the fact that this situation was anything but funny to her and slowly shook her head as he stripped off his vest, then jerked his shirt up over his head and started to wring it out as she said.

"That was exactly what you needed. Now do you think you can stay with me long enough to actually talk about that trait of yours."

"Don't want to talk. _I want to mate_." He growled in a rough gravely timbre. Naru rolled her eyes and made a shadow clone as Kakashi twisted around a little bit to see what she was doing. He gave her a narrow eyed look then asked.

"Clone?" Kakashi said pointedly, his voice guttural. As he apparently tried to ask her why she had made one and what it was for.

"I'm going to send it out to find Jiriaya and let him know that we're both okay." Kakashi looked doubtful that what she was saying was the truth and let out a low rumbling, warning growl. He didn't want another male anywhere near them until they were mated. He didn't _care_ how worried the other man got.

As far as the copy nin was concerned, the elder wasn't welcome there.

Setting his shirt aside Kakashi slowly and gracefully got to his feet and held his hand out to Naru, intending to end this nonsense about not wanting to mate using dirty and underhanded tactics if he had too.

However Naru just stood there, her arms at her sides; with no intention of letting him get his hands on her. "Don't make me use the thingy to snap you out of it for good, wolfy. You won't like it if I do. In fact it may traumatiz you so badly that you never think of sex or mating ever again." She warned as he narrowed his eyes at her again and started towards her as the clone took off running as fast as it could back towards town.

He gave her a curious look as he got closer, tilting his head as if asking 'Why should I care about your meaningless warning?' Naru sighed and mentally swore at him. The damned man didn't know what he was getting himself into. But he learned the second he laid his hands on her.

His horrified screams sent animals from all over the woods scurrying in every direction as the copy nin found himself trying to fend off a whole fleet of shemale Gai's with long black hair, and _breasts_.

All of them begging for a kiss as they latched onto his arms and legs...


	39. Chapter 39

Kakashi sat on the ground with his bare back against a tree trunk with his wrists bound by chakra enforced wire that was wrapped around the tree three times. His whole body was shaking and his face was a peculiar shade of green.

"That was cruel-" He muttered darkly. More to himself than Naru. She wasn't paying attention to his words anyways. She was too busy running her finger tips along his right bicep like she had been for the past few minutes. She was frowning and kept trying to measure his arm using her hand and finally it got so annoying that he finally snapped. _"And what the hell are you doing?"_

Naru's eyes flickered to his face for a second and she frowned again before skimming her fingers along the length of his arm then started to run her hand along his chest. He made a huffing sound, not understanding what she was doing. If she had wanted to bind him for their mating all she had had to do was say so.

She didn't have to traumatiz him then _tie_ him up with something that he was finding far, far too difficult to break. Her hand dipped a little bit and he gave an angry animalistic growl and nipped at her arm with his teeth. Naru jerked back and looked at him for a second as he gritted out, "Untie me."

She gave him a funny look and slowly shook her head no and he growled again and banged his head on the tree trunk in an impatient gesture as he drew his legs up to his chest and hissed as he tried pulling his wrists free of the wire, causing it to tighten painfully. Naru reached out and put a hand against his cheek, stilling his movements as she said worriedly, "I can't untie you yet so just bear with me a little bit longer."

"I'd rather mate."

"Dammit wolfy, stop being so stubborn! The entire drive behind your compulsion to mate is in the hopes of impregnanting your mate. I'm infertile right now! It'll be another-" She stopped speaking and slapped a hand over her mouth as she caught the look of interest on his face.

"Another what, Naru? Another week? Another month? Another year? Do you really think that I haven't considered those things a while ago? Do you really think that those things matter-" Kakashi leaned forward as far as the wire bindings would allow him too and said in a breathless tone. "I just want to fill you up with my seed. Make you mine in every way that counts. It doesn't matter if your infertle now. You will be later. Besides, _something_ somewhere might slip."

Naru grunted. Well hell he had a point there. Something inside of her, her organs, her heart, her blood, her ovaries, _any_ of them could slip rendering her fertile due to the mating heat between her and Kakashi.

Which would be bad. Very, very, very, _very_ bad since she wasn't sure her maternal instincts would kick in right away. _"Untie me."_ Kakashi said again, this time his tone was more guttural, the words barely understandable.

Again, Naru shook her head no and then pointed at him. "Can't. I'm checking something and I need to be able to do it without you trying to grab me."

He looked at her, his displeasure showing as he shifted around so that she could see the impressive bulge in his pants. Naru looked down at it for a second, a little bit of a flush working it's way up to her cheeks before she awkwardly looked away and muttered something under her breath before saying.

"Your body is changing Kashi. Your eyes, your skeletal structure, your teeth and muscle. Even your very way of thinking is changing. I need you to dig down as deep as you can and try to think _rationally_."

He gave her an confused look. Not understanding much of anything she had just said. Sure he knew what the word 'changing' meant but that was about it until Naru made a frustrated sound and quickly slashed her hand through the air in front of his face.

He flinched a little bit, expecting her to strike him but her hand never connected with his skin. Instead it just hung there in front of his face as an icy blue/white chakra begain to swirl in the middle of her palm before shooting up about three inches out of her palm then circling back on itself until it formed a ring of glassy looking chakra that looked similar to a mirror.

Kakashi blinked upon seeing his reflection. He didn't recognize himself. The eyes, the hair, the facial features, even the thick build of his body from the neck down to the tops of his shoulders seemed totally wrong to him.

Naru had hated to do this to him in this manner but Kakashi needed to know that he was in the grips of something that he couldn't fight against. The physical changes in him were becoming more and more noticable.

She'd already noticed that his muscle mass was changing, the length of his arms and legs had already changed by an inch or so. His hair- It had been sort of long and shaggy looking back at the hotel, but it had lengthened considerably since then and now hung a little ways past his shoulder blades.

She had also noticed that there appeared to be a scroll like mark, similar to what an illistration of water waves looked like, wrapped around one of his biceps and then running along one side of his collar bone, ending in a slight upward curve at the hollow of his throat.

It was very faint, but she could see it nevertheless.

He looked up a little bit at her, his confusion clear in his expression and after a moment or so of shocked silence asked in a gravely tone of voice. "What's happening to me?"

"It's your bloodline limit-" He started to shake his head in denial. He didn't have a bloodline limit! He couldn't! His father had never mentioned one before his death. Even the third, fourth, and fifth Hokages had never mentioned anything to him about one. "Kakashi, it's occurred to me that either you don't want to awknowledge the fact that you have one or you were never told. Either way, I have to find out what it is before the changes in you cause you to become so unstable that you die."

Kakashi was silent for a moment as he tried to grasp what she was saying when she knelt down, the chakra mirror in her hand disappearing as she reached out and framed his face in her hands and forced him to look at her from under his bangs. She looked worried. He supposed that she had every right to be since they were mates and all.

But as much as he wanted to comfort her, he had no idea what to do or say.

"I know that your in denial, and upset about everything thus far... But will you let me see into your memories-" He started to shake his head no a panicked look crossing his face. As freaked out as he was about the possibility of being killed by a bloodline trait that never should have been. He was far more worried about her poking about in his head.

What if she saw something that he didn't want her to see? What if by some stupid chance she got hurt? Trapped? Lost forever?

"Kashi, it'll be okay. If I can see what you can do and why you don't know about it, I can stabalize your condition and save you-" Naru gave him a small smile and said in a coaxing tone. "We could have a future. A life together. That's what you want right?"

Kakashi's eyes widened a little bit as he realized what she was doing. She was promising herself to him in exchange for a small amount of knowledge. Was it worth it? Would her life and possibly her sanity be worth a future that may or may not come to be?

He wasn't so sure it was worth it. But before he had the chance to so much as say no, Naru settled herself in his lap and gave him a heated kiss on the lips that sent his blood preassure spiking dangerously and the next moment he found himself standing in the middle of his childhood home. And his father, Sakumo, was laying on the floor a few feet from him, a bloody knife sticking out of his stomach.

Confused Kakashi looked around. Trying to figure out what had just happened as his father drew his attention again with a strange sound.

Kakashi's eyes widened in horror and disbelief as his bleeding father started to drag himself towards him with his bloody hands, the knife tearing his body open further causing more blood to spill out.

His father stopped an inch or so from him and reached out and grabbed his ankle and tipped his head back and looked up at him, his normally dark eyes an eeriy glowing green as Kakashi's ankle started to burn strangely.

Not that Kakashi noticed any. His eyes were fixated on his fathers agonized expression as he choked out, _"K-Kashi...s-s-so glad that you m-made i-it h-home. I d-didn't c-cut d-deeply enough... B-Be a g-good boy a-and f-finish me o-off..."_


	40. Chapter 40

His father stopped an inch or so from him and reached out and grabbed his ankle and tipped his head back and looked up at him, his normally dark eyes an eerie glowing green as Kakashi's ankle started to burn strangely.

Not that Kakashi noticed any. His eyes were fixated on his fathers agonized expression as he choked out, _"K-Kashi...s-s-so glad that you m-made i-it h-home. I d-didn't c-cut d-deeply enough... B-Be a g-good boy a-and f-finish me o-off..." _

Kakashi stared at his father in wide eyed horror as he gripped the knife handle and moved it back and forth a bit to dislodge it before finally pulling it out with a sickening _Slick_ sound and held it out to Kakashi who was starting to hyperventilate, his face behind his mask an ashen bloodless white.

Overhead in the study rafters, Naru shifted worriedly.

She'd made a mistake in dragging her wolfy's conscious mind to this place to bear witness to this tragedy again. But at least now she could piece things together about how he got his bloodline limit. After all she could still see the subtle push of the elder Hatake's chakra being forced into his ten year old son's body even from her vantage point.

Seconds ticked by. Feeling like forever as Sakumo waited patiently for Kakashi to take the blood stained blade from his hand and finally Kakashi's fingers twitched and he started to reach for the blade.

He was crying by this point and Naru had had enough.

She knew that she couldn't change certain historic events, and Sakumo's death had been something that had shaped Kakashi's being in a huge, huge way. But she couldn't let this history repeat itself. That would simply be too cruel. Something, _anything_ had to be done.

She shifted again and then let herself fall to the floor from the rafters, startling both Hatake's when she suddenly hit the floor next to them and with an annoyed growl knocked Kakashi out then looked at Sakumo with a dark look on her face and hissed as she lowered Kakashi to the floor carefully. "Who the hell do you think you are you ass?"

Sakumo's eerie green eyes stared at her for a moment before he flipped the knife in his hand and snarled. "Who the fuck are you?"

It was inconceivable to him that someone other than Kakashi could manage to get past the traps and seals placed around their home and despite his wound he somehow managed to push himself up and get to his feet, the knife still tightly gripped in his hand.

Sakumo Hatake was a big man, Naru mused as he stood at his full height, towering over her. But it wasn't just his height that made him big. It was his build, and the impressive sense of presence he had. Those things coupled with the wild sense of danger that cloaked him made him an impressive man indeed.

But not to her. To her he was a selfish son of a bitch doing irreparable damage to his young son.

And she wanted to kick his face in for it.

Sakumo put the tip of the blade against her neck and growled. "Your name bitch. And why you're here."

Naru looked down at the blade and felt him apply a little bit of pressure and without thinking slapped his hand away from her neck causing him to more or less slit her throat. Blood squirted out of the wound, staining her jacket and shirt as Sakumo stood there with a calm look that gradually changed to one of shock when she didn't go down and die.

Naru popped her neck and let him stab her a few times then once she felt he had experimented enough, smacked the knife from his hand and tossed it across the room as made a tsking sound. "For a wolf, you aren't terribly clever. In fact, stabbing and cutting something that is incapable of death is very stupid."

Sakumo bared his teeth at her and growled. "Everything dies. Now tell me who you are and what your doing here before I get truly pissed." Naru gave a breathy little laugh, finding him amusing in a twisted sort of way.

"Cowards who force their children to do their dirty work have no right to demand anything of me."

Sakumo made an angry warning sound and lashed out, getting her across the face with his fist. Naru didn't even move. To be honest the blow hadn't even hurt her. She however could and did hurt him by stepping in close and knocked him back down to the floor and then straddled his waist and dug her fingers into his wound. Sakumo screamed in fury and suddenly fell silent when she slapped her hand over his mouth and leaned down close and spat.

"Worthless scum. Do you know what you're doing to him? Do you even care? You disgusting horrible little maggot! I hate people like you. People who inflict harm without bothering to _think_ of the consequences- You deserve death!" Sakumo growled behind her hand and reached up and gripped both sides of her head in his hands and applied pressure.

Attempting to crush her skull.

It might have worked on a lesser person. Someone human, but it didn't work on her. And aside from the headache she felt coming on before flicking him on the nose in an immitation of Tsunade, causing the man to yelp and try to bite her- it didn't do anything to her at all. The two of them grappled and snarled at each other for a few minutes while Naru maintained contact with Sakumo's body in an effort to heal his wound.

As far as she was concerned the damned man could crawl off and die after she got some damned answers to save his son.

He managed to throw her, not that it mattered any since his wound had been more or less healed, and she hit the floor a few feet from Kakashi with a loud thud as he came up screaming in rage as he lifted up his shirt and patted down his stomach before looking at her, a desolate expression crossing his face for an instat as he lowered the hem of his shirt and asked brokenly, "How could you do something so cruel?"

Naru stared at him for a second, her eyes narrowed. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask him how she was being cruel when he looked to Kakashi's still figure and said in a pained tone. "I love my son-" He looked back at her and snapped. "And I'm dying so that he can live."

Naru cocked her head and looked at him strangely. She was about to ask him what he meant when she caught a feral look on his face a second before he charged her.


	41. Chapter 41

Sakumo's goal was clear to her, but everything else was a mystery. An infuriating, irritating, mystery that Naru was becoming more and more determined to figure out as Sakumo charged her. She waited until he was almost literally upon her before grabbing his vest and tossing him into the air hard enough for him to hit one of the rafters above her head before he tumbled through the air and hit the floor, head first.

Jarring him senseless and semi conscious.

Naru cringed a little bit, having not meant to use his three hundred and thirty pound body against him in such a way and after checking to make sure that she hadn't broken his neck she sighed and sat back on her heels next to him and thought for a moment. She wouldn't be able to get information from him in his current state. He simply wasn't lucid enough to be of any use to her.

So that left her with some jutsu but it felt wrong to her to use any of them on him. After all, this man was more or less her soon to be father-in-law and if anything she should be asking him for an autograph or something. I mean how often could a girl say that she met the frigging White Fang of Konoha- _Before_ he killed himself.

However she needed some way to extract the information needed and since he refused to calm down long enough to actually talk to her, then that left her with only a few options left.

One of them was to look into his memories as well. Which would be dangerous for her since she was already looking through Kakashi's and had already altered them to a degree. Not only that but if she looked too deeply she could become trapped and then both she and Kakashi would be lost.

She was sure that she could possibly pull the information if she used the Yamanaka clans mind jutsu like abilities that she had for a little while.

But there was just two tiny problems with that. One was that it felt far too much like she would be torturing Sakumo. And two, was that she had never used it before to test it out. She felt that just because she had power, she shouldn't use it too much.

It could become addictive and currupt her.

That and the use of that particular ability was considered an gross invasion of privacy because it would tell her far too much and lay Sakumo's mental defenses and his soul completely bare. She would see and know everything from beginning to end.

What makes him tick. How devoted he was to the village, to his family, his clan- _Everything. _

_I'm not so sure I want to know that much but something has to be done or Kakashi will probably die. _Naru thought as she chewed on her bottom lip and glanced over at little Kashi. She wasn't sure how long he'd be out since he possessed his adult self's conscious mind so she needed to make a choice and do something before he woke up and started to relive his father's death again.

Finally deciding to take a huge risk to gain the information needed, Naru sighed and placed one hand on the still stunned man's forehead and focused until she felt that peculiar fuzziness fill her head-

The first memory she come across was one chocked full of information about the clan.

Apparently like the Hyugga's, the Hatake clan was broken down into two or three branches. The warrior class, which possessed a keen intellect, sharp mind, and skills beyond the other branchs. They were classified by the color of their hair and eyes since the warrior class of the class were always born with silver hair, tan or fair skin, and were very pleasing to look upon.

The second branch was comprised of women who dealt in politics. Who were often married to some of the warrior class for certain reasons.

And then there was the citizen class- the non warriors of the clan. The defenseless ones that for the first hundred years or so were looked down on and thought of as useless. However after about a hundred and fifty years the head of the clan laid down some new rules that he enforced with severe pain if anyone didn't follow them to the letter.

Apparently several young men of the warrior class had attacked and raped an innocent girl from the citizen class. The girl's family was led to believe to have instigated the incident and was labled a whore and shunned by her them.

However after she learned that she was preganant and had confronted her attackers and had them laugh at her and tell her that no one would do anything about it, the girl went to see the head of the clan who had at one time been one of the citizen class but after his tenth birthday his parents had been killed and the former clan head had adopted him; he heard the girl out and was sypathetic to her plight.

So to set things right he made an example of the young men responsible for causing so much pain, then found a husband for her within the clan and set up things so that no matter what happened, she and her child should she choose to keep it would never want for anything.

This caused some hostility among the ranks, but others from the different branchs though this was a very wise thing to do since many of the younger generation had no real concept of the harm and discontentment they were creating among their ranks.

After all the girl that had been hurt wasn't the first and many of the others had been close cousins to some of the others in the warrior class.

After time the three branchs were merged. Mainly to stop the mistreatment of the weaker ones among other things.

Sakumo himself had been born to a traditional family with a warrior class father and an mother who was a distant cousin. His father had often told him that they had to intermarry or their blood line would become tainted. Which was why his father was so excited when Sakumo's mating instincts triggered when he was sixteen. The female in question was the daughter of another warrior class, one of Sakumo's cousin's.

Sakumo stuck unusually close to her while his body changed from that of a wirey and lean framed sixteen year old boy, to one built for ripping through people like tissue paper. And after his condition was stabilized by a little bit of chakra from his mate, pushed through his skin right over his heart to mark him- Sakumo's mate told him flat out that she didn't want him.

Which led him to eventually kill the man she was planning to marry. After that he forced her to marry him and while she hated him at first, he managed to eventually get her to see that they couldn't ever be apart. It was simply unheard of for a claimed male to let him woman run wild and have illicet affairs with others.

It wasn't until Kakashi was born that they really became a family. Karin was nothing but a loving mother. And Sakumo was nothing but a loving father. But all of that changed on the day that Karin died.

Or rather everything changed on the day that Sakumo came home from a mission and found his wife standing over their crying one year old son with a knife in her hand and a crazed look on her face.


	42. Chapter 42

Sakumo Hatake could remember that horrible day as vividly as he could the day before today.

He'd just come back from an assassination mission and had cleaned himself up in a pond along his way home and had picked flowers for Karin, hoping for some cuddle time with his two favorite people in the world he'd taken his time coming home and quickly walked up the steps to the porch and opened the kitchen door and had froze automatically at the scene before him.

There had been Karin, in her favorite outfit, her hair tied back like she liked it when she was fixing their meals, her pale grey eyes fixated on their infant son who sat on the floor partially under a table that they kept against the wall. Kakashi was dressed in a silvery blue outfit that had a rip or tear in it along the seam of one of his shoulders.

Kakashi was crying. And Karin, who was normally such an attentive and loving mother- was just staring at him with a peculiar look on her face as her fingers tightened around the knife in her hand.

She didn't even notice Sakumo was there. Didn't even seem to care that he was there even when he slipped into the kitchen and set the flowers down on the table and asked in a worried tone. "Karin? Karin what's wrong?"

Again she didn't even look at him. Didn't even acknowledge him. She just looked at Kakashi for a moment then without any provocation she lashed out and kicked him. Her foot catching Kakashi in the side and send him rolling across the floor where he hit the wall and let out an ungodly wail.

Karin started towards him, raising the knife a little bit as she went and Sakumo did the only thing that he could. He crossed the room and placed himself between Karin and their son and attempted to talk her into putting down the blade before someone got hurt. But there was no reasoning with her.

He tried seeing if someone had put a genjutsu on her. Tried to restrain her and force her to drop the blade.

She stabbed him three times in the lower back, dangerously close to his internal organs and he tried desperately to fight her off. He pushed her back as hard as he could but the waiflike woman wouldn't budge. It was like she had suddenly gained the stregnth of five men. She pushed him back. Much to his dismay, and almost came a hairsbreath from cutting Kakashi's fragile little body in half before he managed to thow her.

Time slowed down to a snails pace as he watched her sail through the air and hit the kitchen table where he'd left her flowers, she rolled and fell off of the edge. Toppling the table onto it's side and just lay there.

Sakumo counted the seconds, then second turned into a minute and he looked down at Kakashi who was sitting up now, his little face red and tear streaked and he had his thumb in his mouth and was looking across the room at the table. Deciding that his son could do without him for a second Sakumo went to check on Karin and dropped down to his knees beside her when he saw her laying face down on the floor.

Thinking that she was merely unconscious he started to turn her over so that he could pick her up and then grab Kakashi so that he could take them to the hospital to be checked out when he turned her over onto her back and let out a horrified scream when he saw that the knife that she had been holding was buried to the hilt in the center of her chest, her eyes were open and glazed and she wasn't breathing.

He sat there with a devastated look on his face, just staring blankly down at her. Unsure of what he should do. Part of him wanted to die. To just lay down there on the floor next to her and will himself to stop living.

He felt the trickle of tears slip down his face, soaking his mask and reached out and closed Karin's eyes as he felt Kakashi's presence and turned his head just enough to see his son sitting next to his mother's feet, his little hands against her ankle and he tried to shake her.

Sakumo's maternal instincts kicked in and he reached out and picked Kakashi up and ignoring everything else stood up and walked out the door and ran to the hospital where he handed Kakashi off to a nurse after telling her what had happened and asking her to take care of him while he left to do something.

And after wringing a promise from the nurse that his son would be okay and in one piece once he came back, he felt relieved enough to leave the hospital and returned home where he buried his wife and cleaned up the kitchen and informed the Hokage of what had happened before going to get his son.

He didn't return to the house for almost a month. Choosing instead for he and Kakashi to stay in a hotel until he felt he could stand to return home. He'd always had questions about what had prompted Karin to attack Kakashi and himself. Had always wondered if he could in some way have prevented her death by simply knocking her out or something.

He blamed himself. And rightly so, he was the reason Kakashi would grow up without a mother.

Over the passing years Sakumo tried to make up for the lack of Kakashi's mothers presence in his life by making sure that he spent every moment that he could with his son. He taught him about their clan, the history of the village. He taught him games to pass the time when he was bored. He taught him to read, write, do math, science- He taught Kakashi philosophy, and politics.

Everything was fine for the first few years, though Sakumo started to notice that Kakashi would always show up at the dinner table with bruises. However instead of getting worried he chocked it up to boy's being boy's and left it at that.

About three months after that he started to blackout. He had no warning, no idea what had happened. He could have been doing house work one moment and the next he was standing in the woods or in Kakashi's room, sometimes he'd have a little bit of blood on his fingers and sometimes he would feel this peculiar sense of satisfaction.

He never suspected that like his wife, he was a carrier for a genetic disorder that would lead him to attack and wound Kakashi in the attempt to murder him.

It wasn't until about two months ago, after Kakashi's tenth birthday when Sakumo finally seemed to realize what was wrong with him.

Sadly it was also the day that Kakashi caught him trying to slit his throat during their family dinner.

Honestly Sakumo had been so-so _distraught_ by the look on Kakashi's face that he had dropped the steak knife he'd put against his throat and he'd run out of the house as fast and as far as he could.

Part of him disbelieving of what he had been about to do while another part of him all but screamed at him to finish it. To kill his son.

After that Sakumo had taken steps to assure that Kakashi was safe from him, whether he was lucid or not. He had Jiriaya and his student the Fourth Hokage come to the house and place protective seals around Kakashi's bedroom that would activate and _fling_ Sakumo out of the room the second that murderous intent was detected. He set things up so that Kakashi spent more and more time on missions or with Minato.

While doing all of those, he also took the time to steal scrolls (well okay, 'steal' was a tad untruthful since Minato kept walking by the room marked _forbidden_ and hollering out, "Put it back once your done." The dratted brat pissed Sakumo off to no end with his damned skulking) so that he could do research on his family and had learned that the blood sickness was passed down every few generations. Then it would skip a few of the newer generations then it would surface again.

He learned that the more potent the blood the stronger the sickness. Knowing that he had it and that Karin had also had the sickness, Sakumo felt a sliver of fear for Kakashi's future and well being. So he found a forbidden scroll that sealed particular blood line traits and tweaked it so that he could place a seal on himself. However there was a trick to it.

He would have to die to make sure that the sickness couldn't be passed down to Kakashi when he transferred his other bloodline traits to him. So after sending Kakashi off on a lengthy mission with Minato, Sakumo had sat down and used the few moments of lucidness he possessed to they're fullest and had planned out what to do next while putting his affairs in order.

He would die and leave his son for good. Because if he didn't, Kakashi would never be safe from him.

(*******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************)

Naru pulled her hand back and took several shuddering breaths as Sakumo slowly, very slowly started to come to his senses and looked at her. And for a second she could see the person he had been before getting sick. He looked at her just as Kakashi looked at her.

With that bizarre mixture of curiosity, frustration and even a faint trace of humor. "You love your son." Naru said, parroting his own words back to him. He gave her a small sad smile then pushed himself up a little bit and groaned and put a hand to his head and was silent for a moment before finally saying.

"I would do anything for my son."

"But you can't live?" Sakumo glanced at her and slowly shook his head no, a pained expression crossing his face.

"No cure. Just nothing but madness to drive me on. It's just not safe for him. He's still so young-" He frowned in confusion and dropped his hand and looked at her a little more closely. "Who are you?" He asked in a more civil tone than any of the other times he'd asked.

Naru gave him a small smile. "I'm Naru."

"Naru who?"

"Just Naru."

"You aren't normal, are you?"

"Anything that doesn't die when you kill it should definately be considered so. Why?"

"Just clearing some stuff up... What are you doing in my home? And why is Kakashi- Oh shit! _Kashi!_" Sakumo shouted as he scurried to his feet and ran over to his son and bent down to pick him up before freezing and looking back at Naru who was still sitting on the floor with a watchful/bemused look on her face.

"He's just unconscious isn't he?" The man asked in an irked tone. Naru gave him a cheeky grin and he made a funny huffing sound as he straightened his spine and glared at her then snapped. "Well you should have said so to begin with instead of taking ten years off of my-" Naru raised a brow at him and he stopped and muttered. "Oh. Right."


	43. Chapter 43

Sakumo checked on Kakashi for what must have been the upteenth time in the past hour, noting that his son was not only still unconscious but was starting to run a fever as Sakumo's chakra circulated through his body. Passing his bloodline traits to Kakashi.

They would then fall dormant and only surface from time to time through his teens as he gained more and more control and only awakening completely once he found his mate and his body went through the change's necessary to help him protect his mate.

He brushed Kakashi's hair back from his face as he shivered and was momentarily startled when the woman- er creature- er, _whatever_ the hell she was, held her jacket out to him and waited for him to take it. "So tell me Naru, you're a ninja aren't you?"

Naru nodded her head absently as Sakumo took her jacket and used it to cover Kakashi who automatically curled up under the cotton and sighed as if relieved. "Yes. A fellow Leaf nin like yourself."

"I've never seen you before." Sakumo said in a slightly suspicious tone. Naru looked at him and he blinked and sucked in a breath. Good god the girl was a beauty! And she had such lovely, piercing eyes. Sakumo hadn't seen a woman as breathtaking as she in what must have been _years_.

So of course he knew that there was no way that he could have ever seen her before. Mad or not, he was pretty sure he'd remember a face like hers.

"I don't get out much-" Naru said with a shrug and he gave her an 'uh-huh' look causing her to bristle a little bit and snap, "I dislike being looked at! So I have a perfectly valid reason for staying hidden."

Sakumo's lips twitched a little bit as he moved away from Kakashi. "Then you must be a very good shinobi."

"Second to none." Naru said honestly. Sakumo raised a brow at her and then cocked his head, unsure of whether she was bragging or simply being modest. With the words _'Second to none'_ it was more than a mite difficult to tell. Which sort of piqued his curiosity.

"What's your clan name?"

"None-ya."

Sakumo laughed softly and shook his head at her reply. "Nice. Not very original but nice just the same. Seriously though, what clan do you come from?"

"I feel no need to answer your security questions when you're still planning to kill yourself." Naru said and was a little bit startled when Sakumo crossed his arms over his chest and leaned forward into her personal space a little bit and smirked evilly.

"You can either tell me your clan name or I'll postpone my death long enough to make you miserable."

"Not a very well thought out threat."

"It's not a threat little girl, it's a promise."

"_Okay _then, that wasn't a very well thought out promise."

"You're very good at thinking on your feet aren't you?"

Naru shrugged. "I have my moments. Will Kashi be okay?" A little surprised by the sudden change of subject he studied Naru for a moment then looked back at Kakashi, trying to figure out why a creature like Naru would take such an interest in his son.

"He'll be fine with a bit of rest. He's developing a fever and will probably fall into a sort of coma for the next few days."

"He won't remember what happened between you?"

"No. Probably not." Sakumo said with a small shake of his head. Naru grunted and started pacing around the room anxiously. The anxiousness she was exhibiting was palpable. Which Sakumo found strange. He caught her looking at Kakashi with a worried look on her face and felt something click in his mind. His jaw dropped open and he gaped at her in shocked disbelief before pulling himself together just enough to point at her and yell.

**_"You're his mate!"_ **It sounded strangely like an accusation even to his ears. Yet Naru paused her pacing and gave him a cheeky grin and all but rubbed his nose in it with the words,

"Took you long enough. I was beginning to wonder if you'd ever catch on."

"B-B-But h-how? W-Why?" Sakumo stuttered incredulously before snapping. "He's just a damned baby!"

"Is he?" Naru asked curiously as she slowly stalked across the room and stopped right in front of him and said, "Genin at seven. Had his first kill at eight. Became chunin at eleven. Fought in his first war- He's no more a child that I. But as his father it makes some sens that you would still think of him as such."

Sakumo opened his mouth to say something then abruptly closed it and tried to wrap his mind around everything that had happened so far. As it hit him that she had just said something very, _very_ peculiar. Kakashi became a chunin at eleven and even fought in his first war? How could that be unless... He made a funny sound and lifted a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose.

He felt a headache coming on as he tried to sort out the information he'd just been given.

Some of it he could make sense of, like the fact that Naru was his son's mate. Though it didn't exactly make sense to him why she had shown up so soon since Kakashi was far too young to claim her.

And then there was the fact that she didn't appear to be a _normal_ human being and obviously knew some things about his son that he wouldn't live long enough to learn of first hand. This knowledge should have bothered him far more than it did, but strangely enough; it didn't. In fact he found her lack of normalcy endearing.

She would fit in with Kakashi nicely once he was grown. The two fell silent for a moment or two before Naru asked. "Do you want me to save you Sakumo?" He looked at her with a confused look on his face as she cleared her throat and did something odd with one of her hands and muttered. "So that you can see Kakashi grow up."

"There is no cure for the madness in my blood, Naru-" Sakumo said matter of factly before gently saying. "But I thank you for the sentiment anyways."

Naru shook her head, knowing that he didn't understand that she had the power to truely erase all traces of the madness from him. She could go back in time using a jutsu. She could save Kakashi's mother, Sakumo. Hell, she could save the whole goddamn clan!

Kakashi would grow up with cousin's and close blood ties. He would never be alone or feel isolated or lonely. But of course if she did this, history would change dramatically.

She might be able to keep time from unwraveling but it would be a difficult and time consuming thing. It could take her the equivalant of a hundred, perhaps even a thousand years. And by the time she was done there was no guarantee that she wouldn't be the _last_ person in existance.

"I need to get on with it-" Sakumo said after a moment or so of silence, Naru looked up at his face and noted the lines of strain around his eyes, and mouth. "My head is starting to feel like it's splitting apart. And that's never a good thing because it means that I'm starting to lose control again. The last thing I want on my mind is your blood on my hands, Naru."

"I understand." Naru said as she moved back away from him several several steps as he pulled out the knife again and looked at the blade strangely before saying.

"I really wish that I didn't have to leave him. I would have liked to see him grow up." Naru reached out to btouch his shoulder and used one of her abilities to show him what Kakashi would grow up to be while simultaneously draining his chakara.

In her opinion a mysterious death was far more fitting to someone like Sakumo Hatake. It would be less tramatic and painful for both Hatakes to bear.

Before she left she lowered Sakumo to the floor and picked up the knife and disolved it with her chakra before examining her handiwork with a small, sad smile on her face. Sakumo Hatake died exactly on schedule on the day that he was meant too. With the exception of two things.

One was that his medical file would say that he died of an unknown cause.

And two, he'd died with a smile on his face.


	44. Chapter 44

Naru came awake with someone patting her cheeks with their hands. Their breathing harsh. Coming out in short small bursts as she heard the faintest of growling and someone snapping, "Oh shut the hell up before I rub your nose in the dirt!"

She opened her eyes a little bit and saw Jiriaya hovering over her. His expression grim and worried. "Riaya?" Naru rasped tiredly. She must have used more energy than she had meant too. She felt absolutely exhausted.

"Naru! Oh thank god! Are you okay?" The Toad Sage asked, his expression _still_ grim and worried.

"What's wrong?" Naru asked as her eyes drifted closed. Jiriaya slapped her and she opened her eyes and gave him an questioning look as he growled at her.

_"Don't. Go. To. Sleep."_

"But I'm very tired."

"Yes, I"d imagine re writing history and having your former sensei siphoning off a majority of your chakra to weaken you- would do that." Jiriaya said in a slightly disapproving tone as he brushed some of her hair back from her face so that he could see her more clearly. Her face was an off chalk white color due to the fact that Kakashi had drained her chakra to a dangerously low level before he had managed to stumble upon them.

Naru frowned. "Kakashi siphoned off-"

"Yes, dammit! Weren't you paying attention in school when the teacher said that when sensing weakness the enemy will tend to exploit it! Kakashi is a _Hatake_-" The last word was spat like a curse. Letting Naru know just how worried the elder was about her.

Kakashi snarled, "Not an enemy."

Jiriaya waved his hand indifferently and muttered "Same dif." under his breath and Kakashi stopped straining against his wire bindings long enough to slip off a shoe and pick up a rock with his toes and _threw_ it at the elder. Naru looked at Kakashi, noting that he was still tied to the tree and-

Good lord he was huge!

Not just in muscle mass but bulk too. He must now weigh three hundred and twenty pounds! His arms and legs looked longer by several inches, his hair was so long now that it reached the middle of his back. He wasn't freakishly large like his father had been. Though he looked damn close.

Naru had imagined that Sakumo had been three hundred and eighty pounds of pure monster.

Kakashi was still fairly small by comparison, but still this was a mite alarming. "Anyways, Hatake's in their present state are much like enemies are. They will do anything no matter how underhanded to mate with their chosen woman. If this means running you down, backing you into a corner and siphoning off your chakara to weaken you to the point where they can more easily control you- Then yeah, they'll do it."

"But I wasn't running-" Jiriaya slapped her again and almost shouted hysterically.

"My god your delirious! I need to get you away from here!" Kakashi banged his head on the tree trunk and rolled his eyes. Naru blinked as Kakashi growled at the sage.

_"Stop slapping her before I break free and rip your arms off and beat you to death with them."_ Jiriaya looked at the copy nin then back at Naru who's lips curved a little bit at the tips as she muttered.

"I think he means it."

"Oh I know he means it that's part of the reason that I have to get you out of here. That wire won't last much longer with the rapid development of his muscle mass. And I need to hide you somewhere safe until you're on your feet again." Jiriaya said as he started to slip an arm under her legs so that he could pick her up when she pushed against his chest, making him pause.

"I can't go. Not yet. I have to stablize Kashi."

"And just how the hell are you going to do that?"

"I just need to give him a bit more of my chakra..."

"You don't have that much left to spare, leave him for now. He'll be up and driving us mad in an hour or so." Kakashi let out a strained barking laugh and said.

"Ten seconds-" Jiriaya and Naru both looked at him, both of them frowning in confusion while wondering, _Ten seconds till what? _Luckily or unluckily depending on how one looked at things, Kakashi decided to throw them a bone and fill them in on what was going through his mind and said with an wicked looking smile. "You have ten seconds before I'm free."

Jiriaya paled in realization and quickly scooped Naru up in his arms and vanished into the trees as Kakashi counted down. "9...8...7...6...5...4...3...2-" The wire around his wrists finally snapped and he let out an inhuman sound as he quickly got to his feet and went after the elder and his mate.

(*******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************)

Before I write anything for the next chapter I would like to ask the opinion of you the readers about a potential story.

I was watching the Lord of the Rings again the other day and was thinking that it would be fascinating to try writing a fan fic story where Froldo is actually an orphan half human/elf girl that was taken in by the hobits up until the whole journey thing began.

She would be the ring bearer, but because she's half human half elf she would have some peculiar powers that make her just as much a threat as destroying the ring of power.

What do you think? Would that be something any of you would be interested in reading?


	45. Chapter 45

Kakashi ran through the woods absently knocking down trees and such before catching himself and wondering if he'd been able to do that before since all he'd done was brush his fingers along the trunks before they had fallen. He'd guess no since doing so usually required the use of chakra. But then he'd never really paid attention to things like that before.

Everything now however, was starting to come together for him.

Like why the council had been so insistant that he marry and breed. They must have known ahead of time that he would under go physical changes that would make him bigger, badder, and more _lethal_ than he had been before.

He wasn't sure he liked that since it meant that they were privy to other things. Nor did he like much what those things could mean for him and Naru. For example he worried about the fact that they might decide to place his mate and offspring in the middle of a political battle if he refused to do as they wanted.

Perhaps they would even try to hold them hostage in the village and not allow him to see them.

He curled his lips back from his teeth and let out a loud rumbling warning growl. The mere thought of them going after Naru and his young- of seperating them from him, and making them _defenseless_ was enough to send him right over the razors edge.

He caught sight of the elder up ahead and felt his mind shift back to the task at hand. He'd worry about the council when he returned to the village since he wouldn't be able to hide the changes he'd been through already. Hopefully by then, he'd be stable.

He sped up and managed to get in front of the elder carrying his mate and stopped only for a second while debating on if he should climb the tree next to him and knock the man out of the trees, but quickly dismissed this idea since his mate was running too low on chakra to prevent herself from falling and being injured if he did. It was his fault, he knew, that she was running so low on chakra.

The truth of the matter was that he hadn't been trying to weaken her so that she couldn't run away. He'd been trying to pull her back from wherever in his head she had been. He'd been worried that she would get hurt in some way.

He'd just...gone a little too far on his siphoning.

He heard her voice, it was much softer and more tired sounding than it had been before and his heart clenched in his chest out of guilt. He'd have to fix her a nice cozy den somewhere secluded to rest in until his transformation ended.

He'd have to let her regain her strength before he could mate with her anyways. And he would like having cuddle time to reconnect with her while she regained her strength.

He saw the elder pass over him and tipped his head back and curled his lips back in a silent snarl. But before he could think about anything else, he would have to deal with the elder. He just wished that there was a really, _really_ steep cliff nearby that he could toss him off of.

(******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************)

Konoha village was in a little bit of an uproar about Kakashi, and Naru being MIA. It hadn't been such a problem at first for Tsunade, but then Kakashi's day of retirment came and he had been strangely absent from the party the village had been throwing him.

Which had caused the council and some of the clan heads that were friends with Kakashi, to complain endlessly about his absence. Then when Sakura accidnetally let it slip that Kakashi had taken off after Naru, whom had been absent from the village for little more than a week now- Well everyone had flipped out then.

The rookie kids had been looking high and low for the blond in the hopes that she had merely gotten away from them _within_ the village. However upon not finding Naru anywhere rumors began to circulate that she had been kidnapped in the dead of night. While other rumors started about her finally getting fed up with the village and leaving to live her life as a rogue nin.

Natrually everyone flipped out again because they didn't know what to believe which had led to Tsunade taking drastic measures and confining everyone to the village where they had to entertain Gaara- The newest Kazekage of the sand village and Naru's predo brother- while he visited the village.

Today however Gaara had foisted the lot of rambunctious/worried nins onto his siblings and run like hell. He had found his way to what was left of Naru's apartment then headed straight to Iruka's where he sat and visited with him and his students for a while before moving on to the Tower so that he could sit with Tsunade who had been busy pouring over a blackened file with a worried look on her face.

"Ah, Gaara. Come in and sit down. I think I might need to speak with you about the Biiju."

(****************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************)

Jiriaya knew he was in over his head when Kakashi not only caught him, but bound him and partially buried him in the ground before scooping up Naru and lovingly nuzzling her cheek as he ran his hands along her spine, checking for any injuries that she may have gotten when he'd tackled the man, before looking at the elder and hissing, "Annoying..."

"You bastard! You've buried me up to my neck in the dirt and worried me endlessly and I'm annoying... I am going to hurt you so bad-" Jiriaya yelled in a incredulous tone before continuing his rant. "You know those books you love so much? Consider them gone. I will _never_ publish another porn story for as long as I live. And if I do publish any more, they'll be about you and Gai and how you take it up the-"

Kakashi shifted his hold on Naru, trying hard not to wake her now that she seemed to have fallen asleep and pulled a dirty rag out of his weapon's pouch and stuffed it in Jiriaya's mouth before he could say anything more and got a disgruntled look from the man before he straightened his spine and gave the man a cheeky looking grin before he turned and vanished into thin air.


	46. Chapter 46

"So Kyubbi ripped itself into pieces and left it's demonic power within Naru so that she would survive having it extracted and created a flesh and blood form so that once outside of Naru it would _die_..." Gaara couldn't have sounded more aghast to Tsunade even if he had wanted.

"That's what I was told, yes. Can you think of any reasons why it would do that though?"

"Well yes. Millions. Hardly any of them good-" Gaara said as he sat back in his seat, his expression still horrified. God in heaven for Naru to have gone through such a thing- "One question before we continue Tsunade. Why was I not contacted and asked to come to Naru's aid when she was captured?" Gaara managed to push aside his inital shock and horror upon finding out what had happened to Naru and was now looking quite furious.

Tsunade opened her mouth to say something then snapped it shut for a moment. No matter what she said Gaara was going to be hurt and pissed. But that didn't mean that she was eager to jump into this head first. Not when she knew how_ volitile_ the red headed Kage's temper could be.

"Forgive me Gaara but even _I_ didn't know what had happened until she had come back."

Gaara was silent for a moment before he relaxed a bit. _Ah, so that's how it was._ Jiriaya had lost Naru, nearly gotten her killed, and had simply been too afraid to face down his Kage and Naru's friends. _Idiot. I'll gut him one of these days, I swear it. _Gaara thought darkly as he finally blinked.

Apparently he'd not blinked in the past few minutes and was making Tsunade nervous.

"Uh...c-can we get back to work here?" She asked in a nervous tone that didn't even phase him as he nodded his head. "Okay then, as mentioned before Kyubbi died to save Naru. You said that you could think up a million reasons _why_. Care to share them?"

Gaara sighed. "The defining factor in this is if Kyubbi cared about Naru or not. If it cared about her then it probably gave up on trying to escape, control, or cause harm to her and everyone else in the village... Now if Kyubbi saw it's extraction as one last try to get revenge- well then saving Naru's live could be used as a weapon of sorts since she has it's demonic chakra. Demon's are well known for their dark characters. Devouring people and their souls. It could have changed Naru for the sole purpose of _destroying_ the leaf village."

"Naru doesn't exactly act like she used too, but she hasn't done anything harmful or alarming-" But then again Tsunade might not have noticed anything because she had been busy with other things of late.

"Do you really think that she would if Kyubbi decided to use her for this purpose? Listen to me Tsunade. Determine if Naru is really Naru- Have her mind looked into do whatever you can to seal some of her abilities away. Because these things could possibly save you in the long run."

Tsunade looked uneasy for a moment. Gaara had a point of course, but that didn't mean that she had to like what he was saying. "Do you really think that she-"

"I don't want too Tsunade. In fact I loath the very thought. But there has never been a person to undergo a demonic transformation and come out of it whole and completely untouched. Even if Naru is herself now, there is the chance that that will change somewhere down the line. I'm merely saying that you much be prepared."

"Hai." Tsunade said in agreement as she pulled out Naru's recently updated medical files. Which included a short list of the abilities that Naru had already displayed. According to Gaara it was a very, very, very short list and while not completely harmless the information was useful.

(*********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************)

The den that Kakashi found and fixed for Naru to rest in wasn't anything special, aside from the underground hot spring and the crystal covered taverns. But it was easy to defend and that's what mattered most to him.

He spent over an hour preparing a bed or moss and leaves for her in one of the underground taverns and laid her on it then settled himself on the ground next to her and after a while the cracking of his bones and the cramping in his stomach caused him to go through her stuff in an effort to find a pain reliever or something.

He didn't find much aside from a few bars of candy and her money. _Where were her weapons?_ Shouldn't they be in the pouch attached to her right leg? In the holster around her- He patted her hips down out of idle curiosity and grunted and blinked. _Holy fucking-_ He thought in outrage when he found no kunai holsters, no shiriken holders, no paper bomb containers.

His mate had been running around everwhere completely defensless! Why? Why would Naru be running around without a- He found a length of wire hidden on her and though he wanted to check out it's length and such but it was wound around her naked upper thigh. He could _feel_ it through her clothes.

But it was hardly an adequate weapon to fight with.

He sighed and sat back on his heels and ran his fingers through his long shaggy hair and grabbed up one of the candy bars and peeled the paper back and took a bite and studied Naru from under hooded eye lids. He'd have to have a talk with Naru about her total lack of an protective arsenal once she woke up.


	47. Chapter 47

Kakashi was almost finished with the third candy bar he'd found when Naru's eyes fluttered open as she made a soft moaning sound. "Evening-" Kakashi said as he stuffed the rest of the candy bar into his mouth and asked around chewing. "Sleep well?"

"Kashi?" He hummed and swallowed what was in his mouth and sat back as the chocolate did it's work. Loosening the uncomfortable cramps in his stomach so that he could relax a little bit before saying,

"Do you wanna tell me why you've been running around unarmed?" Because he'd been wracking hsi brain trying to think of a possible reason for why she wasn't armed and while he kept coming back to the 'not quite human anymore' part, he wasn't sure what to make of such thoughts.

I mean if Naru was so untouchable that she no longer needed weapons to defend herself...well, what exactly did that mean? Did it mean that she was literally _indestructable_? And if so what did that mean for him?

"No. Too tired to think clearly enough." He hummed again and glanced at her from under hooded lids.

"But there is a _reason_, right?" He prompted, deciding that he wasn't going to let this go until she gave him some information to work with.

She rolled over and muttered something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like 'bite me' as her eyes fluttered closed and she fell asleep again. Her chakra must have been drained to beyond the point of exhaustion, Kakashi surmised as he watched her sleep through the better part of the day and on into the next night before she finally woke up again.

He was cooking a two fat little rabbits over a fire he'd built an hour or so before he'd gone hunting and already had the rabbits skinned and skewered on a stick. He saw Naru shift slightly and looked away from the flames to see what she was up too and grinned to himself when she pushed herself half way up on her elbows and looked around. A small frown on her face as she looked around the cave.

"Where are we?"

"An underground cave that I found." Kakashi said as he got up and moved over to where she was and dropped down to sit next to her.

"How long have we been here?" Naru asked in her usual raspy tone as she rubbed her eyes tiredly with one hand as Kakashi brushed some of her dirty hair back from her face.

"A few days. You've been sleeping the whole time."

"And I'm still tired." Naru said in wry amusement.

Kakashi chuckled and shook his head. "You look like you need a bath." He said suddenly as he shifted a little bit closer so that he could slip his arms around her and pulled her up off of the moss bed and into his lap so that he could hold her for a few minutes before saying, "There's a hot spring in the cavern just off this one. If you want you can use it to wash up a bit."

Naru hummed. "Are you trying to say that you don't like dirty girls?"

"No. I like dirty girls. I really, _really_ like them-" He said in a fond tone that had her turning her head to look up at him. He had this stupid little grin on his face that vanished as soon as he realised she was looking at him and quickly cleared his throat and said gently. "But I doubt you would appreciate how much in your current condition so why don't you go on and bathe. I'll stay here and try to behave myself."

"And think about those dirty girls you like so much." Naru teased. Kakashi looked away, his face red. God what was wrong with him? Here he was with literally the girl of his dreams and he was thinking back on his former sexual exploits with so much fondness that he'd been caught grinning.

He was lucky Naru was such a forgiving girl or he'd have had the hair slapped right off of his head. As it was he might have to step up his efforts to woo her to make sure that she knew he cared about her and _only_ her. He helped her up and slipped one of her arms around his neck while keeping a firm grasp on her waist just in case her legs buckled and helped her to the cavern he'd been talking about.

The hot spring was something else. Even Naru had to admit this.

The steam rising off of the water smelled faintly of sulfer, and the sand littering the cavern floor looked like diamond dust. It was such a pure silvery white. There were jagged crystal formations sticking up out of the water and the sand in vivid hues of pink, lilac, lavender, amethyst, and clear white. Naru took one look around the place and her breath caught in her throat.

It was just so _pretty_. "You want me to take a bath here?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"No reason." It just seems like a waste to tarnish the beauty of the cavern with the dirt and grime on her body. He slipped her arm out from around his neck and eased her down onto the sand floor and then beat a hasty retreat back to the door way of the cavern and said.

"I'll leave you to it. But if you need anything let me know..."

"Thanks Kashi, I'll do that."

He nodded his head then turned and started to leave but stopped himself and turned back to face her and hesitated for a second before saying half jokingly, "Naru, don't drown."

Naru's response was to pick up a crystal and to chuck it at his head.


	48. Chapter 48

By the time Naru came out of the chamber Kakashi had taken her too, she was clean, her hair damp, and she was almost completely dressed. Almost. She was wearing everything but a proper shirt over the mesh and midriff armor she wore under her clothing, and was minus her jacket. She carelessly flung it down on the ground next to the fire as Kakashi removed the rabbits from the fire and tore off a leg and held it out to Naru, ignoring the burning sensation that came from having scalding hot grease run down his fingers.

His need to feed Naru overriding any sense of pain that he might have felt. Naru took the meat from him and without even bothering to blow on it a few times, bit into it and ripped a nice piece of flesh from the bone and swallowed it without chewing.

Kakashi gaped at her for a second, wondering how the hell she had managed to do that without choking and reached out and put his hand in front of her mouth as she opened it again to take another bite and stopped her. Causing her to give him a mean look and growl, "Your hand Kashi. Move it or lose it."

He looked a mite nervous, previous experiences of coming between her and her food playing through his mind as he jerked his hand back away from her mouth and said in a wary tone. "Chew your food before swallowing."

Naru was quiet for a moment before saying in a sickly sweet tone. "No." Then took another bite of her food and again swallowed without chewing.

He took her food from her this time and she gave him another mean look and licked her lips before reaching out and grabbing his cock in her hand and squeezing. He yelped and jumped nearly out of his skin and almost dropped the rabbit's leg in his hand as she hissed at him from between clenched teeth.

_"Give. It. Back."_

Kakshi tried to focus on what she was saying but her gip on his dick was both so very pleasant and painful and he found his mind wandering as she slipped her hand down the length and grasped his balls in her hand and started to twist, the action meant as a warning that she didn't feel like being ordered around at the moment.

He yelped and jumped again and automatically handed her the meat that he'd taken from her and the uncomfortable pressure she'd placed on his nuts eased up as she let him go and went back to eating as he glared at her.

Oh that had been such a sadistic thing to do to someone who was as hard and aching as he was at the moment.

"You're going to make that little stunt up to me after you're done eating." He growled at her before he took a bite out of his own food. Naru said nothing already knowing that he had something perverted in mind.

It had been days since she last ate something and she felt like her stomach was trying to eat itself out of her body. It was such an uncomfortable feeling that she couldn't help but feel a little out of sorts. But then if anyone would understand that Kakashi would.

Kakashi paused in mid bite to watch her pick the little bit of meat on the bones in her hands, off and frowned. Wondering how long it had been since she last ate a decent meal. Had she eaten before he'd caught up with her and Jiriaya? Or had she not been able to eat anything until now? It would certainly explain her testy attitude.

She reached out and ripped off another large piece of meat and stuffed half of it into her mouth and swallowed it whole before he finally asked. "How long has it been since you ate anything?"

She stopped all traces of movement and licked her lips as she looked at him. "About half a week I guess." _Give or take a few days. _She thought as she took another, much smaller bite of the meat in her hands. This time she bothered chewing. But just a little bit before she swallowed and then started licking her hands clean of the grease left behind as she eyed him.

Kakashi didn't really notice at first since he had gone back to eating while wondering if he should hunt some more rabbits down just in case before letting his gaze flicker back to Naru and noticed that she was eyeing him with an almost predatory look on her face. "What?" He asked warily, wondering if she was planning to jump him for his food despite the fact that there was still one and a half rabbits hanging over the fire to eat.

It certainly wouldn't be the first time she'd jumped him for his food. Hence his inital wariness.

"I need something else-" He held what was in his hands out to her and she shook her head no. That wasn't what she wanted. She needed something else entirely. A male's sex fluids.

Ever since she'd gone through her change, from time to time she craved such bizarre things. Which was why she usually carried chocolate bars on her. They sometimes curbed her cravings and helped keep them from getting out of control. But since Kakashi had eaten her candy bars, she no longer had anything to curb her craving which left her with the choice of suffering through it or doing something about it.

Kakashi was already hard and achy. So he probably wouldn't mind if she took care of two birds with one stone and did something to kill her craving while easing his need. "Naru?"

"I, uh...need to-" She flushed and squirmed a little bit where she sat and Kakashi got an oh look on his face and pointed towards another cavern and said.

"Bathroom's that way." She blinked at him and face palmed, looking as uncomfortable as she felt physically. God why did men always have to make everything so hard? One would think that with Kakashi so aroused the first thing on his mind would be; Sex, sex, sex. But no, he had to be thick skulled.

"Do you want me to hit you in the head with a rock?" She asked in an outraged tone that had Kakashi looking at her funny. Obviously wondering what he'd done to upset her.

"Look Naru, if you have to go then just go. It's nothing to be shy about." She bared her teeth at him in a silent snarl. Sure he would say that, he was a guy and not the least bit shy about his bodily functions. Whereas _she_ felt that her current craving for semen was unnatural and..._gross_.

It was embarrassing and humiliating. So much so that she often found herself wishing that she was still human. But because she wasn't, and her body needed the nutrients; she didn't have a choice in this. _I hate myself. I hate myself. I hate myself-_ Naru chanted over and over in her mind as she reached out and wrapped her hand around Kakashi's cock- this time more gently than before.

The man still jumped and gave her an slightly wary look but didn't do anything to stop her. Either he was too scared to bother; fearing that she might break his shaft in half or something. Or maybe he was simply curious to know what she was doing and was more than a little bit surprised and startled when she shifted closer to him and leaned down over his lap and licked him.

"N-Naru?" He said her name in a shakey tone as she stroked her hand along his member and licked him again before pulling back and frowning as she licked her lips again, his taste wasn't what she had expected it to be. Slightly salty. But not unpleasant.

She felt his hand tangle in the hair of her nape and looked at him. "I-I'm craving semen." She said with an mortified look on her pretty face. Kakashi blinked at her, not really sure if he'd heard her right and slowly nodded his head.

"Okay..." He said stupidly, not really knowing what else to say. He was so confused at this point that he doubted that he could say much of anything. Hadn't she said before that she had no interest in mating? Then what was this craving business? He wondered curiously. "Could you explain something to me-"

"I still have no interest in mating Kakashi. The craving I have now is something that I get from time to time before my fertile period. The nutrients from the semen helps my body prepare for mating and possibly even childbirth."

"Oh. Oh well in that case, help yourself." Kakashi said in a shocked/stunned tone.

"I'm trying-" Naru bit out from between gritted teeth. God she was embarrassed! "But this is..._mortifying_."

"Well... Just do what feels natural. I mean you've done things like this before, haven't you?"

_"I beg your pardon, Kakashi Hatake- What the hell did you just say to me?" _

He looked at her wide eyed, her tone cluing him in on his blunder as his jaw went slack and he _gaped_ at her in shock and disbelief. _How the hell did she managed not_ to _be sent on missions where she'd have to-_ He shook his head and firmly squashed the question in his mind knowing already that the late third and Lady Tsunade both had something to do with the fact that she'd never done something like this before.

"Nothing. I didn't say a word."

_"Liar."_ She growled at him before she hesitantly leaned down and licked him again before experimentally putting the tip of his dick in her mouth and lightly sucked as Kakashi shivered and sat back to allow her better access to his body.


	49. Chapter 49

Naru sat back on her heels, licking her lips. A small frown marring her features as she wiped at some of the liquid escaping from between her lips with her finger tips as the remainder of Kakashi's third load of cum spattered the underside of her chin, her neck and chest.

She looked down at herself with a grossed out look on her pretty face as Kakashi cracked his eyes open and looked at her from under his lids. "Something wrong?" He asked from between pants as he slowly came down from the euphoria high that one got from multiple orgasms.

Naru wiped at her mouth with the back of one delicately boned hand and scowled as she swallowed what was in her mouth then finally said in an almost accusing tone. "You cum like a firehose. I can't swallow it all."

"Oh-" Kakashi said in a breathless tone, looking surprised by her comment before giving her a wolfish grin then said. "Sorry."

Naru gave him an uh-huh look though she didn't believe he was sorry. In fact he looked rather happy with himself and his aim. _Ugh- I need another bath. _She thought as she started to move back so that she could get up when he reached out and grabbed her and somehow managed to get her settled, stradling his hips and made a humming sound as he looked her over.

"I've certainly made a mess of you, haven't I love?"

"Yes. And I'd like to go get cleaned up."

"In a minute, sweetheart. I wanna cuddle with you some-" Kakashi said as he wrapped his arms around her and held her against his chest and made a soft rumbling purring sound in her ear before asking in a hesitant tone. "Did you consume enough?"

Naru didn't speak, she just lay her head on his shoulder and nodded slightly as he tangled and untangled his fingers in her hair. "That's good..." Kakashi said gently as he ran his fingers though her hair and pushed her back away from him a little bit then leaned his head down so that he could run his tongue along the underside of her chin, up the curve of her jaw before he kissed her cheek then released her. "Alright, I know how _uncomfortable_ that stuff can become once it's dry so you can go clean it off now."

Naru hesitated for a moment. Sure she wanted to clean the stuff off before it dried on her skin. But part of her just wanted to curl up with Kakashi for a little while too. Reaching out she laid a hand on his chest and he looked at her questioningly as she blushed and stammered out, "C-Can I c-curl u-up w-with y-you a-a-a-fter-"

Kakashi lifted a hand to cup one of her cheeks and ran his thumb along her bottom lip and smiled. "Silly girl. Why are you acting so embarrassed? Of course you can curl up with me. Now, go clean yourself off."

Naru nodded her head and got up out of his lap and ran out of the cavern so fast that she nearly tripped over her feet. Leaving Kakashi alone, staring at the tunnel she'd just disappeared down with an amused smile on his face. She had to be the only woman he knew that could engage in an intimate act and still act shy around the person she was with.

It was cute.

Wierd. But cute nevertheless.

Naru splashed around for a good hour before returning to Kakashi's side and paused over by the fire as she noted that he was asleep. The stupid man hadn't been able to wait up on her. And while she wanted to be mad at him for going to sleep without her, she just couldn't. She knelt down next to the fire and started to finger comb her damp hair and stopped again when she saw Kakashi's body contort slightly then shrink.

_Whoa! What the hell? _She thought as she slowly got to her feet again and silently stepped around the fire and dropped down next to Kakashi quietly so that she didn't disturb him and stared at him.

His body contorted again, the slight movement of muscle and bone shifting under his skin making her blink and almost fall on her ass as his body shrunk a little more. She watched him for a good ten minutes wondering why his body contorting wasn't waking him when it occurred to her that he was slowly returning to a state of semi normalcy.

The fact that he wasn't waking was a sort of protection against any pain or discomfort he may be feeling as his body slowly lost some of it's girth and muscle mass. And Naru knew that come morning Kakashi would be at least the same size as his late father. If not bigger in size and mass.

He'd need a hair cut too.

She sighed and sat down with her legs crossed and propped her chin in her hand. Heaven helped the people of Konoha village after this. Because Kakashi Hatake was going to be the next worst thing to ever enter the village since the Kyubbi attack.


	50. Chapter 50

Ah, sorry that I haven't written much today. I've been fixing mistakes on Lulu where I turned Pet into an E-book under my real name, Misty Gewin. Apparently I didn't do it right the last time so I went back and did it again and I even managed to see a reveiw so I think I got it right this time.

I think, I think, I think-

I hope..._ugh_...I have a headache now.

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Naru sat up all night monitering the changed in Kakashi's body as it slowly reverted back to normal and come sun rise that morning, Kakashi was more or less back to normal. If one considered the fact that most of the girth and mass that had been added to his body had broken down, reverting him to a slightly smaller and leaner version of his father.

He'd also added a few inches on from his normal height now making him an impressive six foot four.

She was sitting across from where he lay asleep, with an small bushel of berries that she had found close to a stream that ran about half a mile from the cave. She knew that she shouldn't have left, after all, Kakashi would have had a fit if he'd woken up and found her gone. But she knew that there weren't any enemies in the area that would attack him in his sleeping state.

Aside from Jiriaya but then the old timer wasn't a fool. Nor did he have a death wish.

At most he'd find a nice sturdy stick and beat Kakashi with it while he slept.

She picked up a wild blueberry that she'd picked along with some wild strawberries, blackberries, and some nice plump raspberries- and popped it in her mouth and chewed it as Kakashi finally started to stir from his sleep. He groaned a few times then rolled over and cracked his eyes open and immidiately looked for her.

"Naru?" He croaked as his mismatched eyes landed on her sitting there eating her berries. "What are you doing up already?"

"Didn't sleep. Too busy."

"Busy?" Naru nodded her head but said nothing more. She didn't want to say anything about how fascinating it was to see him revert from his prior state to his present one. She compared certain aspects of his change to some of her own, noticing that their physical transformations- while different- were also strangely alike.

For starters, his sharigan was now camouflaged behind a vivid teal color, his other eye- which had once been a nice sapphire blue had lightened to an electric blue color that at this moment was partially hidden behind silver hair. His chest, biceps, and upper thighs were two times or maybe three times as big as they had once been.

His weight which had been between one hundred and fifty or seventy. Was now probably closer to two hundred and twenty. The marking wound around his bicep and creeping along his collarbone had branched out all the way across the width of his chest and now wound itself around his other bicep.

He pushed himself up and Naru leaned a bit to the side and looked over his back to see if there were any changes there. Sure enough she caught sight of the curve of his ass and broke out into hysterical laughter and fell over, nearly cracking her skull open on the cave wall.

Kakashi gave her a funny look before demanding to know what was so damn funny and was a mite put out when Naru pointed to him and said from between giggles, "Y-Your ass! It got cushy!"

"It what?" Kakashi asked as he stood up and put his hands on his butt and noticed an automatic difference between the way it used to be and the way it was now. _Oh bloody hell-_ He thought darkly as it occurred to him that he had gone from flat assed to round assed. He was going to draw the eye of every homo and perv in Fire country!

And Naru knew it too or she wouldn't be laughing so hard. He made a rumbling growling sound and muttered as he passed her. "Yeah go on. Laugh it up, sweetheart." But he'd get his revenge when she started suffering from morning sickness, so there.

Naru finally managed to pull herself together after a moment or so and pushed herself upright again and asked, "Are you feeling okay? Any weird wants or needs?"

Kakashi dropped his hands away from his butt and looked at her. "You mean aside from my clothes cutting off the circulation to certain parts of my body...uh...no, not really."

"Well that's something at least."

"Yeah I guess so." Kakashi agreed as he shuffled past her working his neck and rolling his shoulders, trying to work the stiffness out of his muscels from sleeping on the ground all night. They had a long trip ahead of them back to the village and as he looked down at himself, he realised that the trip would be that much longer when they passed through town.

He needed some new clothes. _Badly._


	51. Chapter 51

Well kiddies, I'm going to be up all night tonight due to the EEG I'm having done tomorrow.

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After leaving the cave, the two of them traveled in silence to the nearest town and found a clothing store so that Kakashi could get himself some new clothes to fit his new frame.

Something that Naru still found _hilarious_ due to the fact that while they had been looking for the store, Kakashi had had his butt groped, slapped, pinched and had this one woman trip and nearly ripped what was left of his pants right off of him in an effort to steady herself and Naru had had to grab Kakashi's hands to keep him from throwing kunai at the woman as she got up.

Natrually she was still laughing about this by the time they had reached the center of town where Kakashi was planning to get his new clothes. However his plans seemed to go right out the window when they walked through the front doors of the store and were suddenly spotted by a group of drooling, maddened looking women sales reps. All of whom were looking at Kakashi like he was a pop cicle they'd like to lick.

Naru took a not so subtle step back and was stopped when Kakashi grabbed her around the waist and held her up in front of him like a shield and hissed in her ear, _"Don't you dare leave me to them!" _

"Put me down now! I'm ill equipped to handle situations like this!"

"Your a demon Naru, can't you just make them disappear?" Kakashi said in a slightly hysterical tone as the women advanced on them as a group. Naru snorted in amusement then just to irk him further said,

"The hyena smell prey. Behind the little bush is a supple bottomed little elk! Oh they're moving a little faster now-"

"Stop that!"

"That poor little elk won't know what hit him once the hyena have sank their fangs into-"

"May I help you?" One of the women asked, appearing right in front of them. Her eyes giving Kakashi a heated once over. Kakashi made a strangled little sound in the back of his throat and debated on throwing hsi smart mouthed little mate at the woman but quickly decided against it since doing so could come back to bite him on the ass later on.

Especially since Naru would never let him live it down. Hell he wouldn't put it past her to go find Gai and Genma and tell them of what happened. His rep would take a huge hit and he'd die a little inside each and everytime he tried to do his job and had an enemy laugh at him... _Note to self- Kill Gai and Genma once I'm back at the village. _He thought darkly as Naru tipped her head back and looked up at him before saying.

"Yeah... He needs some clothes. Do you think you can help him?"

The woman and her friends all gave Kakashi a predatory look causing him to pale and tighten his grip on Naru almost to the point of pain as one of the women said, "Oh yeah. We can help him."

Kakashi, being able to read between the lines knew what she meant by 'helping' him and whimpered as Naru managed to squirm out of his grasp and run off. Leaving him at the mercy of a flock of cock hungry women in heat. _Oh dear god, kill me now. _He didn't think he could bear the humiliation to come.

A couple of women took hold of his wrists and pulled him away from the door and further into the shop despite the fact that he dug in his heels and tried not to let them take him anywhere. He didn't want to be anyplace he couldn't get out of easily. "Naru! _Naru!_" He called out and saw her standing with her back to him in a corner, pretending to be deaf. Either that or she was paying him back for using her as a shield earlier.

"Naru!" He barked in a tone so loud that the windows shook from it. Naru turned her head and glanced at him as he gave her a furious look and then gave him a sickly sweet smile and said,

"Ah! I forgot to go get something. I'll be back soon!"

_"Oh goddamn it Naru don't you dare-"_


	52. Chapter 52

**_Okay first of all- haven't been updating this much lately. Sorry about that. I was running a fever for the past few days and now that i'm better i'm so stressed that I want to take up smoking. I have two new born infant cousin's both of which are still in the hospital thanks entirely to the fact that both of their lungs collapsed. Another great uncle died. And my little Siamese cat ate poison. So yeah...stress. _**

**_Anyways here's the update for tonight. Enjoy!_**

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_"Oh goddamn it Naru, don't you dare-" _Kakashi started to growl only to be cut off when the woman grabbed his arm and yanked him into the nearest dressing room where she then proceeded to block his one viable exit. Flattening himself against the far wall, partially out of her reach and made a low pitched whimpering sound as the woman started to drool a little. Oh he did_ not_ like this. Not one little frigging bit!

It was one thing to be cornered by his lovely little vixen. But it was quite another to be cornered by some random person eyeing him like prime rib or something. In fact it was enough to make him want to do bodily harm to someone.

Mainly the person blocking his path. The only thing that stopped him was knowing that Naru was close by and if he _did_ do something nasty to the woman- she would likely never forgive him. So he just stood there trying desperately to mask his well- desperation, from the woman as she eyed him like a panther eyed an elk or something.

"My, my you are a handsome one..." The woman purred as she finally got her fill of looking at him from across the room and decided to move in closer to him. Which he did not like. _At. All_. Dammit he was a newly, and happily mated-er married, he meant to say married man, and he didn't want to get into trouble with Naru because some woman decided to switch from ogling him to stroking him instead!

He flattened his back against the wall as much as he could as she reached out to touch him and had to bite back a feral growl of warning. Oh he so did not want this fucking woman's hands on him. Nuh-uh. No way.

After this trip he was going to get a tattoo that said, 'Married and loving it. So stay the hell back bitches!' Or maybe something along the lines of, 'My dick and balls belong to the hot blond beside me... So you can look, but I'll rip your arms off if you try to touch.'

Which was exactly how he felt now.

Like ripping the woman's arms off. However lucky for her, just at the last moment when he was about ready to either climb the wall or tear her a new one- the dressing room door opened and Naru stepped in and grabbed her by the hair and then spun her and kicked her out of the room and then closed and locked the door as the woman hit the floor with a loud thud and a yelp.

Not caring one little bit if she had injured the woman when she had kicked her out of the small room. Her prank on Kakashi had gone far enough. Besides, she had found herself suddenly possessing a jealous streak. "Naru..." Kakashi said in relief, his voice finally finding it's way back to him. "Thank you." He said gently as he flopped down on the small bench suspended from the wall.

"Don't thank me, I took my prank too far."

Kakashi started to say, _Well duh_, but stopped himself when he caught a glimpse of the look on her pretty face and sucked in a breath from between clenched teeth. Holy shit. Was she jealous? In all the years that he had known Naru, he had never seen her display jealousy over the attentions he received from other females. So naturally he felt just a bit out of his depth here.

Just what exactly was he supposed to do?


End file.
